Specs for Xbox One Consoles and Dev Kits

Note This topic applies to Xbox One and Xbox One S development hardware. For information about Xbox One X hardware, see the Xbox One X Retail Console Hardware Specs.

The Xbox One console is designed to offer game developers modern hardware that is more powerful than the Xbox 360. It uses a familiar x64 architecture and tools, and compared with Xbox 360 development, reduces development complexity and effort spent on performance optimization. Hardware accelerators, including “move engines” for common tasks, are included in the console, to further speed and simplify certain operations that involve moving and processing data in bulk. Move engines can perform common game tasks like compression and decompression while moving data around the system. The console also has dedicated hardware support for common audio processing tasks that reduce the amount of CPU time that must be devoted to audio. The GPU provides considerable computing power, and supports Direct3D 11/Direct3D 12.

Xbox One implements different power states so that it can always be powered on, but draws minimal electricity when not in use. The console can be ready instantly when users want to play, and can be configured by users to always maintain a network connection so that console software and games are always current. When users elect to use this “Always On, Always Connected” feature, users will quickly and easily enjoy their connected entertainment experiences, with no waiting for the console to start or to install updates.

Some Xbox One consoles are sold with a new high-fidelity Kinect sensor, which can be enabled or disabled by users according to their preference. The sensor’s color camera provides HD-quality video, and new depth sensor technology provides better screen resolution and less noisy depth data. Active infrared illumination provides high-quality monochrome images even in low ambient light conditions. A wider field of view allows play in smaller spaces, and removes the need for a tilt motor. System software offers a complete API for Natural User Interface (NUI) which has been improved to make it easier to use than the corresponding API provided on the Xbox 360. Access to basic sensor data, as well as some advanced NUI data like skeleton tracking and identity, is provided by a system service that uses resources from the system reservation. This means that titles no longer need to allocate title resources for basic NUI functionality. Some optional NUI features are available on a “pay to play” basis, using title resources, but only if you choose to use these features in your app.

The Xbox One controller makes the best-in-class Xbox 360 controller even better. It has low-latency wireless connectivity to the console, and improved ergonomics. System interactions that use the controller have been simplified to make them easier for noncore gamers. For more information about the Xbox One controller, see Programming the Xbox One Gamepad Controller.

Every Xbox One console has a 500 GB hard drive. This will be large enough to store a large number of games. Xbox One consoles have a Blu-ray Disc drive. Disc media will be used for game and app distribution, and video playback will also be supported. All games are installed on the hard drive. Play from the optical disc is not supported. New streaming install technology enables players to start playing a game while it is being installed to the hard drive.

Audio output from Xbox One is all digital—7.1 discrete PCM output through HDMI and S/PDIF. Hardware accelerators are included for decoding and decompressing common audio formats. There is also a dedicated sound processor to perform common signal processing in hardware.

• Xbox One Specs
• Retail consoles and development kits

Xbox One Specs

• Compute Power
  
  • x64 Architecture
    
  • 8 CPU cores running at 1.75 gigahertz (GHz)
    
  • 1.2 TFLOP Direct3D 11.x GPU
    
• Storage and Memory
  
  • 8 gigabyte (GB) of RAM
    
  • 500 GB hard drive (up to 1 TB on Xbox One, up to 2 TB on Xbox One S)
    
  • 50 GB 6x Blu-ray Disc drive (UHD Blu-ray on Xbox One S)
    
• Networking
  
  • Gigabit Ethernet
    
  • Wi-Fi and Wi-Fi Direct
    
• Hardware Accelerators
  
  • Move engines
    
  • Image, video, and audio codecs
    
  • Kinect multichannel echo cancellation (MEC) hardware
    
  • Cryptography engines for encryption and decryption, and hashing
    

Retail consoles and development kits

Microsoft offers a number of different development kits, each suitable for development or testing of particular kinds of apps. Each kit has the same hardware as a retail Xbox One console, but different capabilities are enabled in order to support development or testing of different kinds of apps.

The following kits are available:

• Exclusive app development kits support all development activities for exclusive apps and shared apps. They provide the most capability for developers, at the highest cost. Development kits provided before September, 2013, were all of this type.
• Shared app development kits support all development activities for shared apps, but do not support development or debugging of exclusive apps. They are available at reduced cost in keeping with the reduced set of capabilities they offer.

In practice, all Xbox One hardware is the same, whether it’s in a retail console or a development kit. The operating system software determines which development and testing capabilities to allow by inspecting certificates installed on the console. This method ensures that development kit hardware is as inexpensive as possible, and enables developers to pay only for the functionality they require, rather than paying for special hardware or capabilities they might never use.

See also

White Paper: Xbox One CPU - Branch Prediction

White Paper: Xbox One XDK Memory Management

White Paper: Xbox One CPU Introduction (Developer Education Materials > All NDA Whitepapers)

White Paper: Xbox One Memory System

White Paper: Xbox One System Hardware Overview