Microsoft has confirmed it's talking with publishers about boosting Xbox One's graphical performance, following yesterday's news that the console will now be sold without Kinect.

Company exec Yusuf Mehdi told Polygon that discussions are ongoing about how to make it easier for developers to get more power out of the console, presumably in a bid to help it hit 1080p resolution on multiplatform titles.

"We are in discussions with our game publishers about what we might do in this space and we will have more to talk about soon," he said.

Digital Foundry has highlighted in the past that 10 percent of the Xbox One's graphic resources are ring-fenced for Kinect and apps. With the news that Kinect is now to become wholly optional for Xbox One owners, it seems the company wants to take this portion of the GPU previously focused on looking for voice commands and gestures and redistribute it elsewhere.

Microsoft's Andrew Goossen previously told the site plans were afoot for such a move, saying "In the future, we plan to open up more options to developers to access this GPU reservation time while maintaining full system functionality."

Since the Xbox One and PS4 launched last November, we've frequently seen PS4 versions of multiplatform games achieve higher resolutions and framerates than their Xbox counterparts, with Watch Dogs and The Witcher 3 being among the latest titles to be affected. Seeing as Microsoft's policy changes yesterday have tried to close the gap with Sony in all other areas, it makes sense the company will try to do the same on this front as soon as possible.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/05/14/xbox-one-performance-could-become-more-powerful-without-kinect