With Microsoft’s focus on the Xbox One X at E3, Gamasutra has been performing a series of interviews on the system.

Following a discussion with Microsoft's corporate vice president for Xbox and the Windows game platforms Mike Ybarra on Friday about the “how” of porting games to Xbox One X and competition with Windows as a platform, today we talk to Microsoft’s senior director of product management and planning for Xbox Albert Penello, asking about the way the company is positioning the hardware to both developers and consumers.

What’s the pitch to developers for Xbox One X?

Penello: When we announced Project Scorpio last year, we talked about building this console. What people didn’t know is we were actually building two consoles [in one]. We were building the one for our customers, but we were also building a bespoke unit specifically for developers, which we had a nice article with Gamasutra on a few months back.

I think the developer was as much in mind in how we built this machine as the consumer was. Because we knew we were introducing a new concept of doing a mid-generation console leap in performance, which hadn’t been done before—at least, when we were conceiving of it we didn’t know of the PS4 Pro. We needed to figure out how to make that process really easy for developers.

So from the get-go we knew that we wanted to be able to take the existing engines that they were working on on Xbox One and get those engines up and running in 4K. And we knew we wanted the high resolution textures and assets that they were building for 4K PCs and give them a place to run in the living room.

I think the pitch is actually quite easy for developers, particularly ones that are making games on PC, which is: If you built an Xbox One game, the code, your dev tools, your systems, your profiling tools, everything you’ve done for Xbox One is going to work immediately out of the box. 

I think the number of 4K televisions is going to grow exponentially in the next couple of years. I think it’s a great developer story that the effort and energy that you’re putting into 4K on the PC is going to have even more customers available on console now with Xbox One X. So I think it’s a great pitch: Really easy to develop for. Those 4K assets now can leave the monitor and go to the TV. And we’ve seen developers getting games up and running in hours. We’re hearing stories of two hours to get it up and running. 

Obviously you have your big studios who are prepped to go 4K. But there’s a wide spectrum of developers, right? You’re not just talking about AAA, there’s also your mid-size developers and then you go all the way down to your tiny indies. What is going to make those developers say that they want to get involved in this mid-generation leap over and above the 4K aspect?

Well, sure. I mean, I think this industry, if you go back to the Atari 2600, more power always enables more creativity. So certainly a developer like the Ori guys are going to choose to use HDR and lighting effects and frame rate and use that performance in ways that makes sense for their artistic vision.

So they’re going to find interesting ways to use it even if resolution isn’t necessarily the thing that’s going to drive their artistry. Developers like power. They’ll find other ways to use that power. That’s what’s exciting about building a canvas like this platform.

The mindset is developers are going to make things for Xbox One X, but they’re also going to make sure that what they’re making is compatible with the previous generation… can you call the Xbox One a previous generation?

Ori and the Will of the Wisps debuted at E3 last week

I think in the console business it’s hard because that’s worked a certain way. So everybody’s mindset is locked into this generational concept. The fact is, if you step out: phones, PCs, all kinds of technology these days just evolve and customers are used to having multiple performance levels at different price points.

I mean the PC is the most scalable platform in the world. So to go from one spec to two specs in this day and age for a developer, is a lot easier for them to comprehend than, I think, people who follow the console business.

Of course, they’re already building their engines to scale to dual 1080 SLI core i7 overclocked processors from Intel integrated graphics chips. They already have to figure out how to make their game engines work. So the idea to go from an Xbox One S to an Xbox One X is very easy. And, again, we focused on making that super simple for them from a development perspective.

How are you making sure that developers want to make that leap? Because the price point, $499, is a big jump up from Xbox One S. When I only have so many resources available to me, am I that bothered about making the jump when there’s still a big Xbox user base already?

Oh yeah, totally. 100%. And I mean, again, it goes back to ease.  When you talk about install base, if developers were only incentivized by install base, we never would get out of a generation. The previous generation is always the largest install base.

But again, even though the install base for integrated graphics is significantly higher than the install base for high-end PC graphics cards, developers still push the envelope there. So it comes down to ease of use.

Assets are already built because they’ve already built 4K stuff on PC. We’ve made it super easy to take that engine and get those textures and assets there. So I don’t think we have to incentivize them. I think we’ve made it easy. I think the assets exists; I think they’re going to want to take advantage of the power. 

So let’s take a step back and take a look at the consumer then. We’re talking 4K, but it’s hard to see what the value proposition is exactly if I haven’t already made that leap. How do you see this user base of the Xbox One X growing, and what’s going to bring those consumers into buying into a 4K television?