Test, Automation, and Publishing 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Title Ratings for Xbox One | Title ratings, which convey information about various kinds of content on Xbox One, also enable technical features such as parental controls. This document identifies the types of title ratings used by Xbox One and how they are supported. | Xbox One Content Management Team | 12/18/2018 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | ATG Systems Engagement Checklist | Covers the methods to collect the appropriate information for your title to assist ATG in their analysis of non-graphics performance issues. | Advanced Technology Group | 12/14/2017 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Intelligent Delivery for Xbox One | Intelligent Delivery enables titles to ship with smaller, faster installs. It allows assets to be targeted to specific consoles, and it allows localized assets to be declared, so that a subset of those language assets can be installed. | Xbox Platform Team | 10/12/2017 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Advanced Unattended Setup Scripting | Unattended setup scripting is a lightweight yet powerful automation technology that was introduced with the March 2017 XDK. This white paper provides several advanced scripting techniques to automate the settings and configuration for your devkits. | Xbox Advanced Technology Group and Xbox Platform Engineering | 10/2/2017 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Finding Cache and Branch Issues | Covers the tools for finding data cache and branch mispredict issues within a title. | Advanced Technology Group | 09/20/2017 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | No Problem: A Practical Look at PIX | Describes common problems that can be diagnosed by using Performance Investigator for Xbox (PIX), the performance analysis tool most commonly used by ATG. | Advanced Technology Group | 09/08/2017 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Finding Threading Issues | Covers the high-level steps needed to find common threading issues within an Xbox One title. | Advanced Technology Group | 06/14/2017 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Xbox One Deployment | Pull deployment is an exciting new technology being developed with the Xbox One release. Pull technology enables you to leave all game binaries and content on the development PC for rapid deployment and editing cycles. | Advanced Technology Group | 05/30/2017 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | The Final Exam: Top Challenges for Certification Testing | This paper provides insight into the Xbox One certification process to minimize the chance of failing your first submission. You can avoid unforeseen delays in your game launch by incorporating this knowledge into your own test and submission process. | Advanced Technology Group | 04/04/2017 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Creating Product Bundles on Xbox One | Product bundles provide more ways to generate revenue and keep players engaged through Season Passes and other value-based product offerings. This white paper reviews the bundling feature of Xbox One and how to configure a bundle for your title. | Xbox Platform Team | 10/28/2015 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Finding Loading Issues | Covers the high-level steps needed to find common file access problems within an Xbox One title. | Advanced Technology Group | 10/21/2015 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Timing Is Everything: Content Update Releases for Xbox One | Provides best practice guidelines for how game publishers can time the release of content updates for their products per title rather than by applying a broad platform-wide or company-wide standard. | Advanced Technology Group | 03/06/2015 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Designing Title Package Layouts for Updates: Best Practices and Guidelines | Describes in general terms how title updates are performed on Xbox One. Explains the interaction between the streaming-installation layout of a title and the update process. Readers will come away with a list of best practices for designing layout files that will deliver the best user experience. | Advanced Technology Group | 01/30/2015 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Title Packaging, Content Updates, and Streaming-Installation Testing | Describes the steps executed by the MakePkg tool during the packaging process, as well as the recommended steps for testing packaging and streaming installation during development. | Xbox Platform Team | 01/28/2015 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Best Practices for Disc-Based Media Reviews | Best-practice guidance on how publishers, before certification, can prepare non-secure disc-based games to the media for review. | Advanced Technology Group | 11/05/2014 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Extending Profiling with ETW on Xbox One | Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) is the standard, high-performance, profiling mechanism on desktop Windows. You may already be familiar with using the Xbox One built-in event providers and sampling profiler to assist you in your performance investigations using tools like xbperf and tracelog. However, authoring your own event providers, and combining them with recently-added features in Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA), can bridge the gap between ETW captures and the information available in PIX. | Advanced Technology Group | 07/02/2014 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | When Searches Fail: Optimizing the Discoverability of Titles on Xbox One | Provides a high-level overview of common search-related issues and includes specific recommendations for optimizing discoverability of titles on Xbox One. | Xbox Live Discovery Team | 04/30/2014 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Xbox One Multiplayer Pre-Certification Functional Checklist | The Certification test cases for multiplayer gameplay represent a potentially complex set of scenarios. This white paper provides high-level scenarios that title developers can use to help them more successfully navigate compliance with multiplayer requirements. | Advanced Technology Group | 01/15/2014 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Getting the Most Out of the Xbox One Linker | Describes best practices that enable you to get the most out of the Xbox One linker during development and when you produce a final release build. | Xbox Platform Team | 09/19/2013 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Sandbox Survival Kit | All Xbox services accessed by the Xbox One Development Kit will be in a unified production physical environment that provides content isolation. We have introduced a new concept—the sandbox. | Advanced Technology Group | 09/12/2013 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Augmenting Exception Handling with Game DVR | Provides a brief overview of how to use Game DVR while developing exclusive titles for Xbox One. Game DVR can augment exception handling by recording the exact moment that led to the exception. | Advanced Technology Group | 7/17/2013 |
| Test, Automation, and Publishing | Looking under the Hood: Diagnostic Tools for C++/CX Internals | Examines several undocumented diagnostic tools in Visual C++ that developers can use to their advantage when writing and debugging C++/CX code. | Advanced Technology Group | 4/26/2013 |