Key information
The Coalition has revealed a technical solution used to make Gears of War: E-Day function smoothly at 60 frames per second on the Xbox Series S console. Developer Kate Rayner explained that the studio bypassed hardware constraints by utilizing the console internal solid-state drive as an extension of the system memory.
Xbox Series S features 10 GB of RAM compared to the 16 GB found on Xbox Series X. To manage this limitation without heavily cutting visual fidelity, the team temporarily stored non-immediate data on the SSD and transferred those assets into main memory only when required by the software.
By dedicating a pair of gigabytes on the storage drive for this method, developers freed approximately 1 GB of usable memory. This technique specifically handled detailed elements found within dense urban environments.
Despite this engineering trick, visual compromises were still necessary to hit the frame rate target on the less powerful hardware, including the removal of Lumen-based reflections. Meanwhile, other Microsoft teams have shown interest in applying this custom memory technique to future projects.
