Xbox Series X and S starts receiving update for Dolby Vision games

Microsoft announced last September that its new Xbox Series X and S consoles would receive in-game support for the Dolby Vision high dynamic range premium format sometime in 2021. It has now been confirmed that the company is already delivering on that promise.

The owners of the Xbox Series X and S on the console’s Alpha test ring reported that after the most recent update (numbered 2104) shipped to their consoles, some S / X Series games were played in Dolby Vision on compatible TVs.

I checked with Microsoft after some X / S Alpha Ring testers (including Twitter user @ jujackson79, who also provided other useful information for this article) started posting on social media about what they were seeing on their Dolby Vision TVs and the company confirmed the development with the following statement:

“As we announced last year, we are excited to bring Dolby Vision support for games to our new Xbox consoles in 2021. The feature is currently in testing and we will have more to announce about general availability and functionality soon.”

Alpha Ring users are reporting that Dolby Vision currently appears to be compatible with four triple AAA titles: Borderlands 3, Gears 5, Wreckfest and the Halo Master Chief Collection.

Given that Dolby Vision apparently needs to be incorporated into a title code, instead of being something that the console can simply add to each game you play, I think having four high-profile titles supporting you at launch is very encouraging. Surely you have to wait for the next one Halo Infinite obtain Dolby Vision support if the Halo MCC o is running, and experience suggests that Microsoft is always committed to ensuring that each Gears title exceeds the technical limit.

Initial reports from Alpha Ring players suggest that the brightness, black levels and color saturation of Dolby Vision games all look more refined than in their original HDR10 forms. This is what I expected based on the impact of Dolby Vision (which, among other things, adds extra information to the HDR stream to help compatible TVs deliver more accurate and dynamic images) on video sources.

At the moment, Microsoft cannot confirm when the Dolby Vision game update will be implemented on all Xbox Series X / S consoles; the final release date will depend, after all, on how many potential problems with it will be discovered during the current public testing phase. But you must be thinking now that it will arrive for everyone in the first half of 2021.

The timing of Dolby Vision’s arrival on the latest Microsoft consoles could not be better for LG, the official partner of EMEA Xbox Series X TV, which has just launched its OLED TVs with Dolby Vision 2021 capability (my review of OLED65G1 can be found on here). While similarly, it provides another reminder that Microsoft’s Xbox Series X TV partner in the U.S. and Canada, Samsung, does not support Dolby Vision on any of its TVs.

Stay tuned for more information on Dolby Vision Series X / S games in the coming weeks.

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