New GDK update could bring noticeable improvements to Xbox Series S games

Microsoft offering up details on the latest version of its Game Development Kit (GDK) might normally be of little interest to all of us non-developer peons, but this time around, there’s two particular updates that could soon be relevant to all of us.

The first new feature of note is that more memory will be available for games. More specifically, developers will now have additional memory accessible when creating the Xbox Series S version of their games, which Microsoft says will come in the form of “hundreds of additional megabytes.”

Microsoft goes on to say that the change “gives developers more control over memory, which can improve graphics performance in memory constrained conditions.” Given the Series S versions of games are competition with their Xbox Series X selves, where far more memory is available for things like gameplay and graphics, this could be a huge boon to making the experience on Series S more comparable.

The June GDK video goes on to also say that developers will now see “improved performance for graphics allocations.” This is all a little over my head, but the Microsoft rep says that the June GDK update has “addressed an issue where graphics virtual addresses were being allocated considerably slower than non-graphics virtual addresses. This improves the speed of graphics virtual address allocation—titles can now take better advantage of recent enhancements in memory management without negatively affecting graphics performance.”

The June GDK brings other enhancements as well, as as improvements on the PC side of game development. Check out the full video above for the rest of those details.