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[Lunatic_Gamer]

Is the Xbox Series S, thanks to its weaker hardware compared to the Xbox Series X and PS5, going to become an issue down the line? While we’re obviously going to have to wait for a concrete answer on that front, Jose Carlos Montero – CEO of Red Hook Games, the studio behind Journey to the West-inspired action-adventure title The Crown of Wu – feels that it certainly falls below its more powerful current-gen counterparts where the current generation’s hierarchy is concerned.

Speaking in a recent interview with GamingBolt, Montero said that personally, he sees the Xbox Series S as more of a support console, especially with Game Pass becoming more of a driving force for Microsoft, and added that he believes the console will find it hard to maintain 1440p/60 FPS for the more demanding games throughout the course of the generation- which is what Microsoft promised back when it was first unveiled.

“It’s going to be hard to hold 1440p/60 FPS for the most demanding games of the generation,” Montero said. “As much as Xbox wants to sell it this way I don’t think the average consumer will want to buy a Series S and establish it as their console for the whole generation. Personally I see it more as a support console, for example in our case at home we have a PS5 and a Series S that we use to play Xbox exclusive games or just to enjoy the wonderful Game Pass system. If we want to enjoy more resolution/quality we play on PS5 or PC directly.”

Microsoft, as you might expect, has staunchly defended the console. In the lead-up to its launch in 2020, for instance, Xbox system architect Andrew Goossen said that the Xbox Series S wouldn’t hold back the new generation of consoles, but would instead actually help advance it.

Xbox Series S is More of a Support Console – The Crown of Wu Dev

gamingbolt.com

 

[Beer Baelly]

1440p/60fps is the sweet spot

 

[Imtjnotu]

They are coming

 

[8BiTw0LF]

Being the lowest common denominator, it will affect this generation as a whole and not just the Xbox ecosystem.

 

[Riky]

The premium consoles will struggle to maintain 4k 60fps as time goes on, they already rarely reach that now.

 

[Tommi84]

1440p/60fps is the sweet spot

Can Series S even achieve this without sacrificing too much from the fidelity of the games?

 

[Killer8]

It's not going to hold anything on the other consoles back. CPU power is almost the same as Series X. And visually everything can be dialled back until it runs acceptably. You'll get your top tier experience on Series X still, even if it means Series S gets the 720p low settings sloppa.

 

[LordOfChaos]

There's already games that run dynamic closer to 1080p on it, but yeah, it's a secondary console to me and a more affordable entry into current gen in developing markets. I have a PS5 and Series S and you can tell when something is running closer to 4K vs 1440p-1080p at worst, but it still looks pretty good and does bring most of the next gen experience in the faster CPU cores and all SSD architecture.

If in a few years it's really struggling to even maintain framerate? I sell it and move on. It's not a big deal and no need to get weird about it.

 

[BouncyFrag]

Love my series S. It goes great with my ps5.

 

[ChiefDada]

After we shut this thread down for speaking on this unfortunate truth, we should find the developer's NeoGAF account and ban him for console warring.

 

[Kataploom]

It's as much of a primary console as it's ps5 or series x to anyone who is happy enough to use it that way, the "secondary or for children" arguments only come from elitists and haters who won't admit their bigger boxes are also cheap weak gaming machines

 

[RoboFu]

Here we go again ….

 

[OceanGaming]

It's not going to hold anything on the other consoles back. CPU power is almost the same as Series X. And visually everything can be dialled back until it runs acceptably. You'll get your top tier experience on Series X still, even if it means Series S gets the 720p low settings sloppa.

You can't dial back the access-memory requirements, which is the main issue with the S model. Not everything is graphics related.

 

[THE DUCK]

Lol the article seems hell bent on trying to make the S look bad only to really end up endorsing it.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Honestly, it's a great console. Though I do wish it had a physical drive.

 

[FunkMiller]

Retarded little brother thread?

Retarded little brother thread.

 

[Monad]

Being the lowest common denominator, it will affect this generation as a whole and not just the Xbox ecosystem.

I hope we move soon to Series S as the lowest common denominator, because PS4 it's the lowest actually.

 

[March Climber]

Switch -->Steam Deck -->Series S -->XSX/PS5-->High End PC

So, I keep being told people want the highlighted section to be the cutoff point?

 

[Bojji]

Switch -->Steam Deck -->Series S -->XSX/PS5-->High End PC

So, I keep being told people want the highlighted section to be the cutoff point?

Switch is non factor in development, if it gets a port its usually specially crafted (gutted LOL) version of the game created by some other studio.

Steam deck is just a pc from software point of view, games will work on it or not and with different levels of performance depending on settings (but devs started to create profiles for it)

Series S is the facto lowest common denominator for this gen, everything will have to fit in low amounts of ram it has - that is (in my opinion) holding game development back and it will for entire generation.

 

[ParaSeoul]

This was promised to give the same experience as the more expensive consoles just at 1080p,every other aspect was supposed to be the same but that hasn't been the case.Worse framerates,lower graphical settings and missing features entirely in some ports. It's good if you just needed a cheap game pass box for less demanding games but that's about it.

 

[Hendrick's]

So much contention in such a small package. XSS sure is a disrupter.

 

[killatopak]

It's not going to hold anything on the other consoles back. CPU power is almost the same as Series X. And visually everything can be dialled back until it runs acceptably. You'll get your top tier experience on Series X still, even if it means Series S gets the 720p low settings sloppa.

It’s not the cpu that’s giving devs the problem. It’s the ram.

 

[sinnergy]

I hope we move soon to Series S as the lowest common denominator, because PS4 it's the lowest actually.

Yup , but that’s a Sony console .. didn’t you get the memo?

 

[ParaSeoul]

Yup , but that’s a Sony console .. didn’t you get the memo?

Support for ps4 will eventually drop but we'll be stuck with the series s. Even in all the upcoming "next gen" only titles.

 

[mdkirby]

I mean we already have baldurs gate 3 being console exclusive to ps5 because they can’t get it to run right on series S, which is a requirement from ms to be able to release at all. There will just be way more stories like this as the gen goes on. I guess it helps that for many third party releases the sales split is not far from 80/20 in ps favour, so losing xbox isn’t too much of a hit on revenue (particularly if they can wrangle some ‘exclusivity’ money or extra free marketing from Sony)

 

[Mr Reasonable]

I mean we already have baldurs gate 3 being console exclusive to ps5 because they can’t get it to run right on series S

Yep. One game every (checks notes) ...2 and a half years certainly feels like something to get very concerned/angry/exercised about. Especially when the game isn't released yet.

Already!

 

[yazenov]

So much contention in such a small package. XSS sure is a disrupter.

It disrupts retail space by sitting there and collecting dust. Not the disruptor MS wishes it to be, despite the price cuts.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

I like eating chips.

 

[reksveks]

I like eating chips.

What definition of chips are we using? UK or US?

I love the size and the value of the series s personally, it goes great with my PC.

 

[Bo_Hazem]

What definition of chips are we using? UK or US?

I love the size and the value of the series s personally, it goes great with my PC.

 

[sinnergy]

Support for ps4 will eventually drop but we'll be stuck with the series s. Even in all the upcoming "next gen" only titles.

It won’t matter because scaling down those titles won’t have a impact on series X or ps5

 

[Three]

Yep. One game every (checks notes) ...2 and a half years certainly feels like something to get very concerned/angry/exercised about. Especially when the game isn't released yet.

Already!

I don't know it seems like we already had concerns with a few devs who said it even prior but were dismissed but this 2 years thing is only going to get worse not better at "every 2 years" because it's only now several next gen only games are being developed and that's going to become more frequent.

It won’t matter because scaling down those titles won’t have a impact on series X or ps5

We're being told it has already had an impact on XSX.

 

[Torrent of Pork]

Like I said in the last thread with the 'I am Bread' devs. The Series S runs Cyberpunk and Flight Sim quite well, so what kind of graphical powerhouse do you have cooking that the Series S can't keep up?

 

[Operations66]

I live like a gypsy and travel place to place. The Series S is perfect for me because it's small and portable. It goes where I go. I have a Series X at my home base, but I'm not there that often these days.

 

[Dick Jones]

I like eating chips.

 

[BlackTron]

By the time PS4 is no longer a factor in game development, people will be wondering where PS5 Pro is. And this XSS situation will be pretty awkward.

 

[jm89]

So much contention in such a small package. XSS sure is a disrupter.

It's disrupting alright, just not what you think it is.

 

[VAVA Mk2]

I think if they did an updated S with a traditional M.2 port like on PS5, it would make it much more desirable as a secondary console. The Seagate cards are too pricey.

 

[mdkirby]

Yep. One game every (checks notes) ...2 and a half years certainly feels like something to get very concerned/angry/exercised about. Especially when the game isn't released yet.

Already!

It’s not the only comment in recent months from developers about series s causing issues, and we’re still only a couple of years into the gen when we’ve had “mostly” cross gen releases from third parties. If it’s an issue for some already at the effective start of the wave of “next gen third party exclusives” then it will be a bigger issue and more common late in the gen when all games will be next gen and developers will be pushing the consoles to their limits.

Baldurs gate does have some particular issue due to the same screen split screen co op, which has always been more demanding, so I don’t think it’ll be a common problem for a while yet. But to say it’s not a problem at all, when there’s evidence to contrary is misrepresentative of reality.

Edit: the issue isn’t even the existence of the S, but more an issue of MS policy, which demands that if it releases on xbox at all it must release on both systems and have feature parity (ie they couldn’t drop co-op from the S version). This could be rectified later in the gen IF microsoft amends their policy.

 

[SmokedMeat]

If you need FSR Performance mode to hit 60fps, then Series S isn’t holding anything back.

 

[Iced Arcade]

It disrupts retail space by sitting there and collecting dust. Not the disruptor MS wishes it to be, despite the price cuts.

 

[Hendrick's]

It's disrupting alright, just not what you think it is.

Right. It's disrupting a lot of brain cells.

 

[jm89]

Right. It's disrupting a lot of brain cells.

Don't put yourself down like that.

 

[Hendrick's]

Don't put yourself down like that.

 

[Banjo64]

Console is just a console man. I used a Series S as my main console for 2 years. Was absolutely fine.

You could happily still be using a PS4 right now to access nearly all of Sony’s PS5 releases.

I use my Switch more than anything else over the past 3 months, and hardware wise it’s trash. I don’t care, I just like playing games in bed.

Holding games back argument? Devs are welcome to leave the Xbox out, as many do for the Switch - of their ambition outstrips the technology.

 

[Roberts]

I have zero interest in buying XSS for myself as I already have XSX but I will buy one for my daughter on her 7th birthday and I know she will lose her shit.

 

[BennyBlanco]

is he even saying anything controversial here?

 

[Deerock71]

You'll get your top tier experience on Series X still, even if it means Series S gets the 720p low settings sloppa.

 

[Oddvintagechap]

If in a few years it's really struggling to even maintain framerate? I sell it and move on. It's not a big deal and no need to get weird about it.

YOU might move on, but every developer has to still develop for it if it’s multi-platform game.

 

[German Hops]

So, the Series S is basically a dev kit sold at retail?