Those who develop games and those who play them share a passion for interactive entertainment, but that doesn’t mean they’re always on the same page. In fact, director of development for Xbox and founder of Xbox Live, Boyd Multerer, argues that what a designer needs and what a gamer wants are completely different.
“They want to know exactly how much RAM they can use, and exactly how much CPU, and exactly how the graphics are going to work, and that should never change,” Multerer said of developers (via Microsoft.com). “The needs of the gamer and the needs of the game developers are at direct odds, so how do you serve both at the same time? That’s the real reason why we did two separate operating systems. One is more static, aimed letting game developers ability to deliver the best games, and one is aimed at the gamer to give them an evolving, changing, updating console that will be able to support the next big social network that hasn’t even been invented yet.”
It’s a symbiotic relationship, but this give and take has been working for years now. The two groups want different things and thankfully, they got both with Xbox One.
