Playing wirelessly means you generally suffer from a higher latency than those playing with wired controllers, but going back to cables is something few console players are willing to do for the sake of faster performance. Therefore, Microsoft has done a lot of work on the latency issue with Xbox Series X to get it as low as possible, and has now shared a report on the work and new controller tech over at Xbox Wire.
Microsoft reveals that "previous controllers sampled inputs and transmitted the results every 8ms, regardless of when games actually needed the input data", something that obviously leads to an uneven flow of signals and latency. But for Xbox Series X, Microsoft has opted for a new tech that transmits the inputs much faster, in a system called "Dynamic Latency Input (DLI)", something Microsoft says will severly lower controller latency with no impact on the battery.
Unfortunately, it's not only the controller that can lead to latency in games, and the console itself can also be optimized to reduce lagging gameplay. Microsoft writes:
"The team also did work to empower game developers to improve and optimize game engine latency. Thanks to a new mechanism the team added, the system can now know the input state that corresponds to every frame sent over HDMI. For the first time developers can easily measure and tune their end-to-end latency during game development without the use of a high-speed camera. By decoupling rendering and input pipelines, Xbox Series X also supports 120 FPS, so games have the option of doubling their frame-rate from 60 FPS, which halves their internal latency."
Microsoft is also a part of the HDMI consortium and has actually been working on making the HDMI 2.1 standard to better support features that are considered important for Xbox Series X. They will also work with leading display manufacturers (where we already know they have business with Samsung) to make them adopt these new HDMI features for Xbox Series X. Expect those "features to start to arrive in select displays beginning in 2020 or 2021".
Basically, it seems like we can expect a whole lot less lagging in games with much better controls for Xbox Series X. Something to look forward to, as many genres really will benefit from this.
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