Getting the most out of your Xbox One X Dev Kit

To get the most out of your Xbox One X dev kit, you should make sure that you are using the latest tools and techniques. This section gives a summary of the latest improvements we’ve made to the Xbox developer experience and how to leverage them to get the most of your Xbox One X dev kit. Many of these productivity improvements work for all dev kits, not just Xbox One X dev kits, and so everyone in your studio can benefit from them.

Xfest talks you should watch

The following Xfest talks give a good introduction to the capabilities of the Xbox One X dev kit and the improvements we’ve made to the Xbox developer experience. For a list of Xfest 2017 talks, see Xbox One X Xfest Talks.

Tools for the Xbox One X dev kit

All of the existing Xbox Development Environment Tools will work with your Xbox One X dev kit. We recommend that you take a look at the latest improvements to the following tools:

Keeping your dev kit up to date

The OS recovery update settings pane in Dev Home allows you to opt in to automatic updates of your dev kit OS—just like retail consoles. We recommend that you opt in to automatic updates, as this makes it easy to keep your dev kit up to date with the latest recovery. Automatic updates are on by default for all Xbox One X dev kits; if you prefer to update your dev kit recovery manually, select the appropriate option in the Dev Home OS recovery update settings pane.

Scripting setup and configuration of your dev kit

Starting with the March 2017 XDK, you can now use scripts to set up and configure all of your dev kits. You can use this feature both for initial setup of your dev kit (OOBE) and for updating your dev kit on a regular basis. For more information, see Configuring Your Dev Kit with an Unattended Setup Script.

Some of the useful things you can do with scripts are the following:

Xbox One X dev kit settings

To understand how to set Xbox One X-specific dev kit features such as console modes, which hard drive to deploy to, and how to set the amount of memory available for your title, see Xbox One X Dev Kit Settings.

Using the front panel display

The front panel of the Xbox One X dev kit has a 256×64 pixel OLED display, a directional button that is used for navigation between screens, and five programmable buttons, each with an associated LED. We have a set of built-in scripts that you can use. You can also associate custom scripts with each button and call the IXboxFrontPanelControl API to leverage the front panel from your title. See Xbox One X: Using the front panel display for more details.

Speeding up deployment and iteration times

We’ve made significant improvements to the speed of deployment and iteration time—F5 times, PIX capture, and PIX analysis times are faster. To find out more about how you can take advantage of the improvements we’ve made and to understand how get the best results from the Xbox Transfer Device, see Speeding up Deployment and Iteration Times.

Note We are still not as fast as we want to be, but we think we are a lot better than we were. Let us know what you think by posting feedback on the support forums or through your Microsoft DAM.

When to use the SSD and when to use the retail HD

Xbox One X dev kits contain the same one-terabyte hard drive that is in retail Xbox One X consoles. dev kits also contain a very fast one-terabyte NVMe SSD. By default, the 1TB NVMe SSD is used for deployment and for the System and Title scratch drives. We recommend that you use the SSD for day-to-day development, as this will give you the fastest deployment and iteration times. Use the retail hard drive only when you need to measure retail I/O performance. For more information, see Xbox One X: Which hard drive to use? When to use the development SSD vs. the retail hard drive.

Using the second NIC

Xbox One X dev kits come with a second network interface controller (NIC) that you can use for debugging and tools traffic. System and game traffic should be routed over the primary (retail) NIC. For more details, see Using the Xbox One X Dev Kit 2nd NIC.

Tooling Memory and how it works

Titles running on an Xbox One X dev kit have access to an additional 12 gigabytes of “tooling” memory. This tooling memory can be used for a variety of purposes including profiling, tracing, storage of unoptimized assets, and so on. For more information about how to configure and use this memory, see Configuring and Accessing Extra Memory during Development.