Microsoft has been under the microscope for their Xbox One console released last year with some developers finding it hard to reach the native 1080p resolution synonymous with this generation. A big part of the reason this has been so hard until now is that, despite the Xbox One’s GPU already being less powerful than the PlayStation 4’s, Microsoft also reserved 10% of the GPU power for its Kinect peripheral.

This crippling reservation was even present in games which do not use Kinect. In this month’s update, the Xbox team released a new SDK in which the Kinect can be switched-off and the extra 10% GPU reserve used to push titles up to their 1080p standard easier. Renowned gaming studio, Bungie, has made use of this new capability to push their upcoming title ‘Destiny’ to this resolution. Battlefield: Hardline will also be 1080p/60fps.

Xbox engineers have time and time again spoken of the “balance” of the console to reduce bottlenecks which, in the process of doing so, introduced more. The Xbox One, many believe, was rushed to market before the necessary tools were in place which we are just starting to see (DirectX 12 most notably.)

Whereas Sony has taken the traditional approach of offering the most powerful hardware they can in a familiar architecture to make development as simple as possible, Microsoft has taken a different approach in a console reliant on the company’s Cloud technology to scale as the infrastructure improves to support it.

Last year we started to see this Cloud technology start to be implemented with Titanfall developer, Respawn Entertainment, revealing they were using it for AI and to make their game possible. Forza 5 also used the Cloud for AI but in an interesting approach to create “Drivatars” which can put you and your unique driving-style (mine has a serious case of road rage) into friends’ matches even whilst you’re offline.

This year we seem to be seeing the start of an exciting expansion in this area. First up is Forza Horizon 2 with beautiful dynamic weather and lighting effects handled in the Cloud. Further into the future we will see Crackdown 3 who we correctly predicted would be developed by Cloudgine and make use of the company’s Cloud-processing expertise for mind-blowing destructive environments.

In our previous article we linked to a demo (video) of Cloud-based destructible environments and how they take a load off the local GPU freeing it up for other usage. It turns out, that demo was actually work on Crackdown 3 according to newly-appointed Xbox chief, Phil Spencer.

@Xone_br33 Yes, build demo was early crackdown work.

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) June 10, 2014

The Xbox One has a much-higher throughput through its use of ESRAM (I know how much that’s becoming a dirty word) that allows textures to be pulled in and out of memory fast – which has clear benefits when being used in tandem with the Cloud. It’s this “balance” which the Xbox engineers have been talking about.

Resolution only tells a small part of the story, however. Ryse, an Xbox-exclusive sub-1080p title, is still the most visually stunning game on either PS4 or Xbox One. It is demanding effects which put the strain on hardware, and the more they can be processed in the Cloud then the more impressive games we’ll see on consoles.

Are you excited by the potential of the Xbox One? Let us know in the comments.