NVIDIA has been pushing ray tracing as the greatest thing since sliced bread, but the head of Xbox appears to have differing thoughts. During a recent interview with Wired, Phil Spencer was asked to comment on one of PC Gamer’s anti-ray-tracing articles (“Ray tracing has failed to deliver on its promise”) and agreed that the writer is “probably right.”
“When I think about games where ray-tracing has had a dramatic impact on my experience as a player, it’s kind of spotty,” Spencer said.
With ray tracing being one of the Xbox Series X’s marketing points (the console fully supports DirectX Raytracing), that’s an interesting admission to make, but many would probably agree: while ray-traced reflections and lighting are gorgeous to look at, they don’t necessarily change the fundamental gaming experience.
Spencer also had a bit to say about 8K, which display giants are already hyping. “I think 8K is aspirational technology,” Spencer said. “The display capabilities of devices are not really there yet. I think we’re years away from 8K being—if it ever is—standard in video games.”
“There’s a little bit of buzzword bingo that starts happening,” he added.