D
Deleted member 471617
Unconfirmed Member
Well, that is a lot of assumptions. Factually, the GDK was available to developers in November 2019 at the very least and development and testing was available in February. As far as what features were in each release after that, we don't know and anything said about that is pure speculation. What we have in that document was leaked from behind Microsoft's development program which is not publicly accessible.
As far as devs using the XDK instead of the GDK. That is false. The Dirt 5 developer referenced it in the video above that Agnostic2020 posted. The June 2020 document shows that release is required for certification and publication to retail.
AMD's PC GPU release and announcement schedule doesn't necessarily mean anything as far as Xbox is concerned Probably has a heck of a lot more to do with Nvidia than Xbox. But this is trying to connect dots for its own sake. There isn't any factual information to draw conclusions from. Just more speculation
What isn't speculation is what the devs are saying and frankly, it doesn't jive with forum comments, unsurprisingly. I expect the development of both consoles will continue to mature over the course of the gen as they always do.
They had the retail GDK since June. Having the GDK for testing and development before hand doesn't mean anything because again, they didn't have the full feature set of RDNA 2. You can't implement any of it if you don't have access to it.
The Dirt 5 developer said he had the GDK for several months but was only able to implement Variable Rate Shading because again, they didn't have the time to use anything else because everything else was given to them late into development. The Dirt 5 developer also said that they're adding Ray Tracing post launch but have thus far only confirmed it for PC.
It's not that im doubting or questioning all that other stuff. It's just doesn't matter because no developer can implement features and use tools that they themselves either A) don't have access to at all or B) have access to but only for a few months at best and when you factor in working from home, it's more like weeks instead of months compared if they were all in their respective studios and thus, don't have the time needed to implement any of it.
Not only that but what the Dirt 5 developer has access to and how much time he has with that access has literally nothing to do with every other developer. What if Ubisoft didn't get access until June but the Dirt 5 developer had access since let's say, March? That's a three month difference, more so considering they're working from home.
I definitely agree that the development kits and tools will improve and mature as the generation progresses like they always do.