Microsoft has confirmed that a few changes have been made to the Xbox One to tweak it and get it ready for its launch in November. Xbox One chief product officer Marc Whitten revealed some of the changes in a podcast hosted by Major Nelson just before the weekend. In summary, after substantial hands-on and testing time the Xbox One developers have improved the console by tweaking up the GPU clock speed to 853MHz and created a new "mono driver" that is "100% optimised" for the hardware.
During the podcast Whitten said "It’s a super exciting time". He explained that "This is the time when you’ve gone from all of these specs and all of these arguments over the last several years to having the product, and really starting to try it internally. We’re running our internal beta and using it at home and starting to see the product really come together."
Whitten mentioned some specific changes to the Xbox hardware and software that the design team thought were optimal choices, following the testing of the first models, "This is the time when we’ve gone from the theory of how the hardware works - what we think the yield is going to look like, what is the thermal envelope, how do things come together - to actually having it in our hands." He detailed "...an example of that is we’ve tweaked up the clock speed on our GPU, from 800 MHz to 853 MHz. Just an example of how you really start landing the program as you get closer to launch."
The driver software which will help developers make the most of the Xbox One hardware has also been improved "...developers have the final dev kits in their hands and are really working closely with us on how things have come together. Since E3, an example is we’ve dropped in what we internally call our ‘mono driver.’ It’s our graphics driver that really is 100% optimized for the Xbox One hardware". Whitten concluded his Xbox One update by saying that the development team is working hard, with passion and everyday they are trying to improve and refine what the Xbox One will offer.
According to the most recent leaks the Xbox One will be released in the UK on 29th November, priced at £419.99. Prices in other regions are 499 US Dollars, 499 Euros and 599 Australian Dollars.
