E3 2014: Destiny Xbox One Resolution Increased

Bungie's upcoming shooter Destiny will have a better final resolution thanks to Microsoft's recent announcement that system resources have been unlocked in the latest SDK.

During Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb's podcast last night from E3 2014 in Los Angeles (via Eurogamer), Xbox boss Phil Spencer said, "Even our friends at Bungie, and I've been spending a lot of time down there, they're going to pick up the June SDK update for Destiny, and they're going to up the resolution of Destiny based on this change. So I think it's just a great sign for us."

Last week, Microsoft announced that a new Xbox One update for developers will boost the console's GPU power. As a result, developers should find better performance and flexibility from the console. Right now, many multiplatform titles--including Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty: Ghosts--run in a higher resolution on the PlayStation 4 than the Xbox One.

The new update arrives as the new, $399 Kinect-free Xbox One becomes available today. Initially, it was suggested that since some of the Xbox One's power is reserved for the Kinect, by removing it, the system might get more powerful. This isn't the whole story, however. You should keep your Kinect plugged in, Spencer said.

"We wanted to give game developers a choice on how much of the reserve, of the Kinect reserve, they wanted to leave in the system," he said. "If they know how they're going to use Kinect, or if they're going to not use Kinect in their game, we wanted them to have the option at a game side to decide how much of that reserve will remain."

"It has nothing to do with Kinect being plugged in; in fact, everyone should leave Kinect plugged in," he added. "Because as soon as the game isn't running anymore, you quit the game, you go back to the dashboard, you are going to have all the great Kinect functionality that you ever had, and you can boot a Kinect game and the Kinect will continue to work--and have no impact on the game that decides on the backend that it's going to lower the reserve that's set in. People should not unplug Kinect."

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