The Xbox Series X is set to usher in the next-generation of console gaming in just a few months--along with Sony's PlayStation 5. Microsoft has already shared plenty of details about its upcoming console, detailing the Xbox Series X's full specs, storage solutions, and more. To gain a better understanding of what this all means for game developers and architects, Windows Central spoke to Microsoft and various third-party game devs and asked them all about the Xbox Series X.

"As a game developer, one of the most exciting improvements that far exceeds expectations is the massive I/O improvements on Xbox Series X," explains Mike Rayner, Studio Technical Director at The Coalition. "In the current generation, as the fidelity and size of our worlds increased, we have seen download times and install sizes grow and increasing runtime I/O demands, which have made it challenging to maintain load-times expectations and meet world streaming demands without detail loss. The Xbox Series X has been holistically designed to directly address this challenge.

"With the Xbox Series X, out of the gate, we reduced our load-times by more than 4x without any code changes. With the new DirectStorage APIs and new hardware decompression, we can further improve I/O performance and reduce CPU overhead, both of which are essential to achieve fast loading." Microsoft has been toting the Xbox Series X's faster loading speeds, and it sounds like the console's new SSD and DirectStorage APIs are clearly having an effect on The Coalition's Gears 5 port.