System White Papers
A white paper is an educational tool that provides you with an in-depth look at a technical aspect of, or the performance of, a component, feature, function, or process. Most often, a white paper introduces you to subjects to expand your knowledge and to help you build better apps. You’ll also discover white papers that emphasize best practices and solutions to help you work smarter.
Important Check out the full list of white papers on the Xbox Game Developer (XGD) site.
| Category | Title | Description | Author | Date of publication |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| System | National Language Support APIs and Localization | Details how to localize package manifest resources and in-title resources in exclusive apps and shared apps, and describes the National Language Support (NLS) API supported by Xbox One. On XGD, a template file for use with Windows 7 is included in the white paper from which this topic is derived. | Advanced Technology Group | 01/26/2016 |
| System | Xbox One Memory Performance | Provides an in-depth look at the various types of memory access and load/store instructions supported on Xbox One. These options vary in performance characteristics and restrictions. | Advanced Technology Group | 09/20/2017 |
| System | Enabling Assembly Language Code Development in Visual Studio | This paper, aimed at advanced systems-level engineers and assembly-language proficient developers, shows how to enable assembly-language development in Visual Studio. While no longer a recommended practice, there are some rare cases where it is necessary. | Advanced Technology Group | 8/23/2017 |
| System | Xbox One Game Trials - Overview and Best Practices | This white paper provides an overview of game trials on Xbox One, including the different types of game trials available and the pros and cons of each. It also describes best practices for designing, testing, and implementing your Xbox One game. | Advanced Technology Group | 7/19/2017 |
| System | Maximizing File Performance | Shows real world data on what type of file loading performance you can get by using several methods to load data from the Xbox One hard drive. | Advanced Technology Group | 06/13/2017 |
| System | Xbox One Family System Hardware Overview | This white paper provides a high-level overview, from a developer’s perspective, of the hardware features of the Xbox One family of consoles. | Advanced Technology Group | 6/1/2017 |
| System | Xbox One CPU: Branch Prediction | Describes branch prediction on the Xbox One CPU and techniques for optimizing code to get the best performance from the branch predictor. Optimizing code for the branch predictor is a key optimization strategy for the Xbox One platform. | Advanced Technology Group | 05/16/2017 |
| System | Process Lifetime Management (PLM) for Xbox One | Provides an overview of PLM for Xbox One to familiarize game architects and developers with PLM concepts and usage patterns early in their design processes. This updated version provides an expanded explanation of the Constrained state. | Advanced Technology Group | 10/05/2015 |
| System | Xbox One Secure Communication Requirements | Covers guidance for correct secure communication for Xbox One titles for console-to-console, console-to-Xbox Live Compute, and console-to-custom service/server connections. | Advanced Technology Group | 08/07/2015 |
| System | Cross-Core Memory Costs on the Xbox One CPU | Builds on the foundation established in Xbox One CPU: Introduction. Addresses the performance issues and costs associated with different read/write operations between caches on the CPU cores. Includes updates for Visual Studio 2015. | Advanced Technology Group | 07/15/2015 |
| System | Thread Synchronization on the Xbox One Family | This paper covers the costs for using various common thread synchronization patterns to control access to a job queue. The latest version of this paper includes updates for Xbox One X. | Advanced Technology Group | 4/28/2017 |
| System | Costs for Synchronization Primitives | This paper covers the costs for all the major synchronization primitives provided by Microsoft in the major scenarios on the Xbox One family of consoles. | Advanced Technology Group | 4/28/2017 |
| System | Xbox One - AMD64 Jaguar CPU Instruction Set and ABI Quick Reference Guide | Gives you easy access to commonly used information for Xbox One CPU and systems programming and disassembly-level debugging, and is designed to be printed in color on 11x17 paper. | Advanced Technology Group | 06/25/2015 |
| System | Getting PLM Right the Second Time | Process Lifetime Management (PLM) is paramount in forming the overall Xbox One experience for the end user. This paper focuses on specific error messages reported by the tools and symptoms as seen on the console. | Advanced Technology Group | 06/15/2015 |
| System | Creating and Using Downloadable Content on Xbox One | Provides an overview of how to create DLC for your title, and includes basic tooling, APIs for use, licensing, and best practice guidelines. Also includes updates about the Suspend event and updating and testing DLC packages. | Advanced Technology Group | 05/08/2015 |
| System | Xbox One Game Trials: Overview and Best Practices | Provides an overview of game trials on Xbox One, including the different types of game trials available and the pros and cons of each, and best practices for designing, testing, and implementing your trial. Updates include PLM behavior that is specific to game trials, including how to opt out of that behavior. | Advanced Technology Group | 03/04/2015 |
| System | Xbox One Memory System | Provides a brief overview of the Xbox One memory system. This topic broadly describes the main clients of the memory system and the bandwidth available between them. | Advanced Technology Group | 06/13/2017 |
| System | Game and App Help Technical Overview and Best Practices | Provides an overview of how to create contextual Help content for Xbox One games and apps, with tips for optimizing the display of your Help manual. | Games and Apps Help Team | 11/24/2014 |
| System | Platform Abstraction Using Asynchronous Message Passing | Multi-platform titles typically use a platform-abstraction strategy for separating platform-dependent implementation details from platform-independent ones. This topic describes an asynchronous message-passing approach to platform abstraction. | Advanced Technology Group | 11/10/2014 |
| System | Xbox One System Hardware Overview | Provides a high-level overview of the hardware features of Xbox One from a developer’s perspective. | Advanced Technology Group | 10/31/2014 |
| System | Understanding Security Tokens for Xbox One | Provides an overview of the structure and contents of tokens used by Xbox One. | Advanced Technology Group | 09/24/2014 |
| System | Xbox One File-Based Content Updates | Xbox One now supports the creation of content updates with file-based granularity instead of chunk-based granularity. This paper provides an overview of this new, more efficient update mechanism. | Xbox Platform Team | 07/16/2014 |
| System | Presentation Queue and Display Planes on Xbox One | Explains in detail the asynchronous mechanism that Xbox One uses for presentation. The system maintains a separate back-buffer presentation queue that is managed in parallel with the CPU and GPU. | Advanced Technology Group | 04/10/2014 |
| System | Pre-Release Titles: Testing Your Xbox One Product with a Beta | Provides an overview of operating a beta test on an Xbox One title before it is released as a final product. This white paper is intended to familiarize developers and producers with the ways that a beta can be used on Xbox One. | Xbox Certification Group | 03/26/2014 |
| System | Xbox One Title Debugging Checklist | Outlines key pieces of configuration and implementation data that support successful investigation and resolution of title implementation issues. | Advanced Technology Group | 02/05/2014 |
| System | Game DVR Experience: Creating and Storing Clips | Provides a high-level overview of Game DVR, to help developers make decisions about how their titles should interact with the system. | Xbox Platform Team | 11/12/2013 |
| System | Connected Storage: Technical Overview and Best Practices | Provides an overview of using the Connected Storage API to store data that roams across consoles and is available offline. This paper also describes best practices for saving data and the design of the resiliency model. | Xbox Platform Team | 10/15/2013 |
| System | Content Controls for Xbox One | Describes how content controls work on Xbox One and explains the recommended ways to implement them. This paper is intended for developers and producers. | Online and Family Safety Team | 10/10/2013 |
| System | System Behavior When Title Installation Fails | Describes the behavior of the Xbox One operating system when an installation of a title from over the network or from optical media fails. The intended audience of this paper is systems engineers developing Xbox One titles. | Advanced Technology Group | 09/24/2013 |
| System | Users, Controllers, and Pairing: Identity on Xbox One | Describes the user and controller model on Xbox One, the API used to access their state, the system-provided methods for pairing them, and the best practices for managing who is playing your game. | NUI, Platform, Shell, and SmartGlass Teams | 09/19/2013 |
| System | Beta Hardware Refresh: Quick Start Guide | Details the top-level changes and provides setup instructions for the updated Xbox One beta hardware, which contains a number of improvements to the original beta hardware. | Advanced Technology Group | 07/02/2013 |
| System | Xbox One XDK Memory Management | Describes the differences in memory layout and allocation between different versions of the XDK for the Alpha kit. | Advanced Technology Group | 01/15/2013 |
| System | Xbox One CPU: Introduction | Describes the features and performance of the Xbox One CPU, how developers should focus their optimization efforts to best use the new CPU, and how developers can prepare their code for Xbox One. | Advanced Technology Group | 03/27/2012 |