Dolby Vision on XBOX Series X

Cross Functional leadership

Integrating Dolby Vision on Xbox Series X and S

In 2019, as Microsoft was gearing up to launch their 9th generation consoles, the Xbox Series X and S. I saw an opportunity to extend Dolby’s premium HDR format, Dolby Vision, into a new content vertical. With Dolby Vision already dominating movies and TV, a game console was the next logical step.

Recognizing Microsoft’s ambition to build the most advanced gaming console, I spearheaded the engineering initiative to enable Dolby Vision for games on Xbox. Our value proposition to Microsoft was clear and met their needs:

Dynamic Tone mapping — Eliminate the 1000 nit barrier, up to 10,000 Nits peak brightness
Zero-Config — It just works
Expansive Ecosystem — Dolby Vision was in over half of 4K TVs for sale in North America
Developer support — Tools and training positioned directly for developers

Our product story changed from supporting a few Xbox games, to thousands over night.

Key Learnings

  • Living in the problem space my whole life was not enough to come to the correct solution. The market research we conducted to define our ideal customer persona drove the breakthroughs with our Dolby Vision solution.
  • Good strategic partnerships drive success. Once we learned we were a good fit for Microsoft, they pushed us to improve the product more.
  • Bold product outcome statements inspired us to make decisions that would have been thought impossible for our company, and pushed our product into a new direction, that has lead to a new product vertical.
  • Proving value will always open new doors. After we demonstrated value to Microsoft on how Dolby Vision could improve thousands of Gen 7 and 8 games. We were given the opportunity to collaborate with the makers of Halo Infinite.

I am proud of the team’s dedication and relentless effort over the 18-month journey to bring this vision to life. Together, we not only made Dolby Vision a reality in gaming, but also secured a strong foothold for future collaborations with 3rd party developers. I find it personally gratifying turn on Xbox, see the Dolby Vision logo light up, and realize that the work I did is touching millions of gamers every day.

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