What's new in the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit

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The Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) is a complete set of tools, APIs, extensions, and programming models that can be used across current and future Microsoft Gaming platforms and initiatives. Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) design and features are driven by your feedback about how you like to develop games. For a complete introduction, see Welcome to the Microsoft Game Development Kit.

The GDKX | Roadmap for this and future releases of the Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) can be found on the Xbox Developer Forums. Release notes for the current release of the Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK) can also be found in the GDK/XDK Release notes space on the Xbox Developer Forums.

In addition to many bug fixes, this release includes the following new features.

Important

This topic includes features that are public. For What's New information that requires NDA access, see What's new in the March 2024 Microsoft Game Development Kit - NDA Features.

Table of Contents

Graphics
System
Networking
Developer tools
PIX
Samples

Graphics

Rasterizer ordered view (ROV)
ROV is a resource type available only to pixel shaders, and it is the key to enable "Order Independent Transparency" (OIT) algorithms for transparent effects. For more details, please refer to the GDK docs and the spec DirectX-Specs | Engineering specs for DirectX features (microsoft.github.io).

System

Added XAppCapture "record this" to user library API
Records application capture data as if the user had triggered the recording. The localIdBuffer passed back from XAppCaptureStartUserRecord is used in XAppCaptureStopUserRecord record to stop the specific recording (multiple recordings can be started at once, the localId is used to stop only one of them). The recording is saved in the user partition. Capture settings are based on GameDVR settings including resolution, save location, automatic upload to Xbox network and OneDrive, and who is allowed to capture (user and game, just user, or no captures allowed).

Networking

PlayFab Telemetry buffering for delayed transmission
When a player is offline or the game is otherwise unable to send telemetry to PlayFab, telemetry events can be buffered for later transmission.

Developer tools

Touch Adaptation Kit Editor Visual Studio Code Extension
The Xbox Team is excited to release its first preview version of the Touch Adaptation Kit Editor Visual Studio Code Extension. This publicly available extension will help creators preview and modify touch layouts for Xbox Game Streaming.

xbCopy (filtered file copy)
xbCopy is a new tool which enables filtered file copy using wild cards and regular expressions for include and exclude rules on files and folders.

Developers can set a Minimum Windows Version in the Game Config
The New WindowsOSVersion element in the MicrosoftGame.config allows setting a Required, Suggested, and recommended version of windows for MSIXVC packages.

Store Development Entitlements Tool
This PC command line tool (DevEntitlementTool.exe) allows users to add, remove, and list entitlements for products purchased and owned by a given Xbox test account. The tool is designed to facilitate programmatic acquisition of entitlements as well as resetting them to re-test acquisition.
This tool is in preview and may have incompatibilities with certain types of products. Feedback is welcome in the forums or via your Microsoft Representative.

PIX

Timing Capture Metrics View Improvements
The consolidated events feature in the Timing Capture metrics view now includes support for GPU PIX events. The metrics details tab has also been enhanced to display an expanded set of statistics, including statistics for event trees. All budgets defined in the capture can now also be viewed together.

Thread and core usage data in the Timing Capture summary view
The summary view in PIX Timing Captures now includes a table that shows the CPU utilization for all cores and for all threads in the game.

Samples

For a complete list of samples included with the Microsoft Game Development Kit (GDK), see Microsoft Game Development Kit samples.