Key information
The Coalition has prioritized high-end visual fidelity for Gears of War: E-Day, aiming to establish the title as a technical benchmark for the current console generation. However, achieving this level of performance on the Xbox Series S presented significant challenges due to the console's hardware constraints.
To address the limited memory capacity of the Series S, technical director Kate Rayner explained to Digital Foundry that the studio implemented a workaround by utilizing the console's NVMe SSD as a form of virtual RAM. This method effectively provides approximately 1 GB of additional memory for the game.
Because SSD data transfer speeds are slower than traditional RAM, the development team carefully selected specific assets to store in this virtual space to ensure gameplay remains smooth. This optimization allows the game to maintain a 60 frames per second target.
Despite these technical achievements, the studio had to disable certain Lumen lighting effects from Unreal Engine 5 to accommodate the hardware. Rayner noted that this successful optimization strategy has garnered interest from other developers looking to improve performance on the platform.
