Xbox dev tools update gives developers more memory for Series S

A new GDK update could see some graphical improvements for the Series S

A recent update to Microsoft’s Game Development Kit is adding a little extra bump in memory for the Xbox Series S. Memory allocation in a GDK update will potentially allow graphical improvements for Xbox Series S games.

In the June GDK, an unlisted video as spotted by The Verge popped up today, detailing improvements to the developer toolkit. One part  notes that more memory is now available for games.

“Hundreds of megabytes” have been freed up, according to the video. This should give developers more control over memory, and could improve graphical performance in memory-constrained situations.

As Ars Technica details, this hasn’t been publicly detailed yet. But this could see developers get a little extra memory to work with on the Xbox Series S side of Microsoft’s current-gen hardware.

More memory for the box

This seems like good news for Xbox Series S fans who want a little graphical “oomph” on their games. The Xbox Series S is the cheaper of Microsoft’s two current-gen offerings, and has proven to be popular.

The relatively cheaper and smaller machine has been a nice surprise for players. It’s especially nice for those who aren’t necessarily chasing 4K resolution graphics. But as Digital Foundry notes in its Xbox Series S write-up, differences can appear game-to-game.

Hopefully, freeing up this extra memory will help out the Series S versions and deal with some troubles around optimizing for the system. While hundreds of megabytes isn’t a sudden multi-GB swing in horsepower, it could be a little uptick that could do a lot.

The GDK update also notes other changes as well, like addressing an issue with graphics virtual addresses. We’ll see how this GDK update ultimately pans out for Xbox Series S users in the games to come.