Microsoft’s move to offer better Xbox One performance by opening up reserved memory for the Kinect, seems to have caused some confusion among users. Despite a reported 10% performance increase without the Kinect, users who unplug their peripheral don’t see any improvements.
The confusion arose recently, with Microsoft’s latest software update that frees up memory and resources previously reserved for Kinect. What this means is that developers can now use those resources in any way they see fit, including a graphics boost, higher frame rate, better models or simply shorter loading times in some cases.
However, this doesn’t mean that unplugging your Kinect, which many folks seem to be doing, will actually benefit you in any way. The changes made by Microsoft are destined for developers, who need to implement them in their games. And even then, your Kinect will still be used for voice commands and other features, but the resources reserved for body tracking and graphics processing will be freed up. So simply unplugging the peripheral does absolutely nothing besides show you an annoying notification.
We already know of some games that will take advantage of this change in policy, such as Destiny and Sunset Overdrive. But until these, and others like them, hit markets your Kinect won’t affect any performance one way or the other.
Image via Microsoft
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