Xbox Series S Won't Hold Back Next-Gen 'In The Slightest', Says Dev

I find it fascinating how people (here's looking at you twitter) feel like developing games with a less powerful system in mind will hold back next gen gaming. I assume none of these people have ever played games on a computer.

Take RDR2 for example. You have an older rig? Cool there are lower settings for that. You have a newer rig? Great, RDR2 will be the most beautiful game you've ever seen. Was the game still made as well as it could have been without compromise? Yep.

@XBontendo Does anybody even dare to say Flight Simulator is “held back”? No.
Lot of people who don’t have any experience with the real development kit are speculating over raw spec sheet which they have suddenly started caring about. They have specifically created the development kit for easy scaling. There’s a recent resetera post where a dev who had the system said it’s actually a very easy experience.

”When dual cloud layers are on the screen the amount of graphics processing necessary increases dramatically and you have one layer of clouds being lit and shadowed but that the upper layer is also then volumetrically shadowing the cloud layer below it. This is insanely next-gen and has basically never been in any game before to my knowledge.” —————————— Digitalfoundry
https://youtu.be/75t_jRQII4w

I doubt the series S will hold back the Series X..

I'm more curious about the other dev posts making the rounds. That XSS won't be able to play the X1X enhanced versions of Xbox One games. Advanced GPU aside, the XSS has both less ram and slower memory bandwidth than Xbox One X.

Now typically better GPUs use less VRAM when doing the same (or better) on older games but that's because they usually have the same or better memory bus and bandwidth.

@Menchi Series S is a perfectly balanced system for 299$ since it has to render 4x times less pixels than Series X. Regarding the memory, the live demo of Sampler Feedback in action built-in GPU hardware clearly shows how it actually cuts down memory requirement by multiple times.
https://youtu.be/fYtJWIxt3-M?t=2m50s
They have made the dev tools to make it easy to scale games. Lot of people are speculating about raw power without any hands-on devkit experience but they are not considering the extra optimisations.
https://gamingbolt.com/xbox-series-xs-sampler-feedback-streaming-is-an-absolute-game-changer-says-developer

There’s a dev who comments on Push Square who’s been very vocal about how terrible the Series S is and how it’s a nightmare for them as it splits the optimisation pipeline. I can see both sides.

@Z3u5000 I'll wait for real world applications and announcements.

@nessisonett I assume this dev has no experience with PCs either? This has been a standard industry "problem" for decades at this point. I suppose I can see the point that scaling is frustrating, but it's been part of industry development for so long it's highly unlikely this will ever be something that will go away.

Also, grain of salt. Given the complaints are on Push Square it's probably about as biased as someone on this site complaining about development for Playstations

The S does concern me in only one respect: Ram. The lower RAM does not equal how much less ram the final rendered image takes in memory, so this means that a game does not simply get to be made and run out of the box in Series S, the game will need at minimum (at the easiest for devs) a different version of the game (smart delivery will help there) with lower resolution textures that take less space in memory.

It will be interesting to see how that drop in RAM affects the Backwards Compatibility performance with games - in particular, those with X enhancements. Having less RAM and less Bandwidth, meaning a lower VRAM too, will affect those games running at 4k. MS themselves also stated that the console is a '1440p' console and the RAM is scaled down for that purpose.

Digital Foundry also mentioned this and expect that the Series S will offer XB1S versions of Backwards Compatibility. Of course it can still offer improved performance with more resources (less frame rate or dynamic resolution drops) and some games, like Gears 5 and Forza Horizon 4, will be getting 'next gen' enhancements anyway. Gears 5 for example will be running at 120fps (in MP) so it will offer 'more' than the XB1 version would allow by just BC.

@BAMozzy My believe is any BC game running on Series S will be made to believe that its running on a One S, so definitvely no 4k, yea.

That still might be an issue, since a One S game can potentially use all that 16gigs for things other than textures or high res models. Not sure how many games are that memory hungry, but I would not be shocked if there are some games out there that do.

Optimized games like Gears 5 are a whole different thing, since they will be tested against Series S during their optimization process.

Edit: Never mind... I dont know why i thought the One gen consoles had 16gb of ram... all i read now is 8gb and 12gb for One X... weird... However did I get to that idea???

@nessisonett Who is this even fooling? Pushsquare and xbox developer don’t go together. Find someone who actually has the dev kit like the recent resetera post where a dev has commented on how it’s easy to develop for lockhart once they have received the dev kit.

@nessisonett If you are talking about whom i think, I take that posters information with an extreme grain of salt. For one, their bias is extremely transparent.

As a dev myself (have not worked on either consoles, for the record) I have met plenty of devs that will bend over backwards to support their whatever-of-choice, and pull any jargon they can to do sound as definite sources.

Few sources are more dangerous and misleading to listen to than an expert with a bias.

@Menchi The irony about your comment is that you are readily believing a developer who makes speculations without any hands-on experience with the hardware though his game (Doom Eternal) runs at a thousand fps on PC. But you are not ready to believe actual footage of Gears 5 running at 1440p120fps on XSS without running into any memory bottleneck. There’s a clear bias you need to work on my mate. Consider reading the recent resetera post where a developer who actually has the hardware kit comments on how it’s actually easy to develop for once they have received the physical kit.

@nessisonett I'm sure he's a real dev. Hey man, I should also mention I have a bridge to sell you.

@Z3u5000 Never said I believe it, hence the waiting. I don't automatically believe PR like you do or unverified claims on twittee. That's why I was curious.

@graysoncharles Those people actually don’t have the hardware kit and are speculating on just raw spec sheet but they are not considering the extra optimisations which they clearly don’t have any knowledge about. You don’t just make a next-gen console without any well thought-out ways to optimise.
https://gamingbolt.com/xbox-series-xs-sampler-feedback-streaming-is-an-absolute-game-changer-says-developer
PCs will always be the lowest denominator, so will the next DOOM games suddenly stop supporting those hardware which are last-gen and less powerful than XSS.

Clearly a bottleneck will only hold back for people who want to use more of the resource that is available. It’s likely that less games will encounter problems on the series S than any current generation console. But for likely to be hard cases that are going to bottleneck on the series S that will be fine on both the Xbox series X and PS5. I’m sure the will also be games that have performance problems on both the PS5 and Xbox series X and when they do it will be exacerbated by the series S.

@Menchi Even if Sony doesn’t show any demo, you claim it to be a 2 sec cold boot IRL all according to wccftech.
When Xbox shows actual Gears 5 gameplay running on XSS with a fps meter you say it’s PR.
The bias is evident. Everything will be ultimately revealed crystal clear later this year when Digitalfoundry shows the Cyberpunk gameplay comparison finally.
Atleast Xbox has disclosed a full naked hardware breakdown with a neutral site like Digitalfoundry way back in February so that we don’t need to rely on “industry sources” like wccftech, moore’s law is ded. 🤣

@nessisonett He's not a developer (may be an indie developer) but mostly a Sony fanboy. The Xbox development kits almost make the scaling an automatic process.

@Tharsman Yeah, as a student, I naturally would defer to his better judgement as he clearly knows what he’s talking about. I do think the RAM in this machine will cause a bottleneck in a couple of years. That being said, the comments have felt a little biased to me.

This was blindingly obvious, but all the pony lovers and stupid over opinionated devs have shouted otherwise cause they are sad idiots really.. devs who haven’t even touched a Series S...

@nessisonett "I do think the RAM in this machine will cause a bottleneck in a couple of years."

Possibly, but almost all games are also on PCs, and I think its still way too common for PCs to have just 16gb of ram for most games to be designed with mandatory 32gb. Plus, a PC with 16gb of ram is running a full OS that takes a big chunk of that, so if the game targets average PC and does not mandate more than 16gb installed on PC, its likely that same game will port without many headaches to the Series S.

If the Series S is as cheap and as powerful as they say...

Then the issue may be more will anyone buy the Series X?

We're now seeing all these cheaper disc-less system taking over.

I'm not a fan of this trend, but we're now entering into the GamePass era.

Things seem to be changing and the higher prices systems may struggle.

@Z3u5000 Classic defense force rhetoric. There is no need for a DF comparison of Cyberpunk. My 3090 will play it best. Like all games.

@Menchi Console gamers want to see every single Digital Foundry comparison and don't care about high-end PC gaming. They are the Eurogamer articles that get most clicks and comments.

@GamerDad66 Then Series S might become the best-selling console of the generation, it's the cheapest and the best value and most console gamers are brand-agnostic.

@BlueOcean Don't worry, it's just the fanboys I'm bashing on for being corporate bootlicking shills. Not the regular gamers.

@Tharsman

Numbers:

Xbox One and Xbox One S: 8GB of GDDR3 RAM, with 5GB at 68GB/s primarily to be used with the graphics system and the other 3GB also at 68GB/s to be used for the other computing functions.

Xbox One X: 12GB of GDDR5 RAM, with 9GB running at 326GB/s primarily to be used with the graphics system and the other 3GB also at 326GB/s to be used for the other computing functions.

Series S: 10GB of GDDR6 SDRAM, with 8GB at 224GB/s primarily to be used with the graphics system and the other 2GB at 56GB/s to be used for the other computing functions.

Series X: 16GB of GDDR6 SDRAM, with 10GB running at 560GB/s primarily to be used with the graphics system and the other 6GB at 336GB/s to be used for the other computing functions.

Next-gen optimisation:

It should be mentioned that Microsoft confirmed to Digital Foundry that Xbox Series X supports compatibility at the hardware level, a big step up from software emulation currently being used on Xbox One.

This allows older games to utilise Xbox Series X’s full potential, making use of 100% of its powerful CPU and GPU. By comparison, Xbox One X’s performance was throttled to just 50% of its actual power when running Xbox 360 and original Xbox games.

Will the install size of games on xsx and xss be different accounting for the different resolutions of the systems ?

@Firesnake I think that Series S will use HD texture packs, thus doesn't need as much RAM and storage. They had mentioned previously that Series X doesn't include a massive amount of memory because memory is used more efficiently on the next-gen consoles. Series S renders at 1080p/1440p and it's able to upscale to 4K so, even with HD textures, is going to look good on 4K TVs.

@graysoncharles Ha ha, no problem.

@GamerDad66 I think even with the PS4 pro, the sales ratio was what 10-20% of the sales of PS4 consoles each year it was out. People like cheap and under powered. Hell, look at the Switch.

It's why I was adamant that MS needed a budget console like the S. The PS5 and XBSX actually have rather limited appeal for wider audiences. They are made for techophiles and die hard gamers. What the S does is far undercut the PS5 so that any casual gamer will be more likely to buy that system, and the X ensures that anyone who wants the top line device has to look at xbox as well. The X wont sell as well as either the S or PS5, but it does the job it was designed for, which is to outperform and limit the appeal of the PS5.

The PS3 and PS4 could proudly boast being more powerful (even if actual results weren't all that impressive in comparison), and the PS4 could also boast it was cheaper too. Next gen, they can't boast either. The PS5 will be appealling to only the (admittedly large) PS brand loyalists.

@nessisonett

“There’s a developer that comments on Push Square.....”

You could have stopped right there because the credibility of said developer is completely nil at that point.

So one of the lead engineers of ID Software (makers of Doom / Doom Eternal) counts as someone 'without even a little experience'?

The box can't even run BC games with X-Box One X optimization for Christ's sake.

@Z3u5000

He’s a troll. Hence why I ignored him. He doesn’t have enough games to keep him busy on his PS4, so he trolls Xbox websites. 🙄

@Nickolaidas And I got called a troll for pointing this out, really tells you who the fanboys are.

@Menchi wouldn't pay too much attention to a certain 3 people on this site, they have xbox shrines in their bedroom and revise and gather facts and information 24/7 just to combat anyone who they believe is a troll or says a bad word about the xbox, e everyone else on here is alright though and not got their d**k in their xbox.

The article clearly states
"he has no access to dev kits for either system"
So you cant take his words seriously without definite proof and only time will tell when more demanding games get created in the future, hence why an article not long back mentioned that maybe some games won't be compatible with the series s and then there's this article which Devs are saying it could be a problem for multi plats
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.gamesradar.com/uk/amp/xbox-series-s-could-bottleneck-some-next-gen-games-developers-suggest/

@Richnj I think you hit the nail on the head and the switch and wii are perfect examples, 90% of gamers don't care about the power or who had the best graphics (especially when it's marginal), it all comes down to price and which has the 1st party games they want to play the most and for casuals and parents to get for their kids it's down to which is cheaper, and for the later it's the series S, I firmly belive the series S will outsell the series X and give the ps5 a good run for its money all on its own. Now if the series S also had a disk drive then that would sell even more crazy

Problems I see with series S, You'll get worse performance, lower draw distances, worse textures more basic lighting, less environmental detail etc etc. The only times that won't be the case is if the game isn't remotely taking advantage of the Series X's power.

It has half the compute units, one third of the tflops and half the RAM. It's like comparing a PC from 5 years ago to a high end new PC. It even only has two thirds of the tflops of the XB1X and less than the PS4 Pro. Even adjusting for the fact the actual effect of each tflop is now higher (so an old thing with 4 would be less powerful with a modern thing with 4) that's still really bad.

Also being digital only and having only 500gb space it will fill in no time then have to pay £170 for an extra custom ssd which then brings the price closer the series X, the series S is looking more like its just for the casuals or just for people who want it for gamepass, which at the moment is likely why I will get the series S just to play gamepass

@Nickolaidas Are you talking about a game (DOOM Eternal) which runs a thousand fps on PC? None of the Doom games will ever be “held back”. But since he still expresses some weird speculations about the raw spec sheet without any hardware platform optimisations that come with it and without having any hands-on with the actual development kit (since he stated nothing about any specific problem that he faced with it) and without taking the extra optimisations into consideration, here’s an important question. Will his “next-gen” DOOM games suddenly stop running on all the last-gen PC hardware that are mostly even less capable than XSS? Which is the “so called” lowest common denominator now?
On another note, going to your profile I see you are also one of the very concerned and passionate butthurt xbox haters who likes to come here and show support for his fellow mates. So there’s no point wasting on nincompoops like yourselves. Do yourself a favour and get a life!

@playstation_king The power of the S doesn't bother me. I'm still enjoying 360, PS3, Wii U and Switch games, let alone Xbone and PS4 games or XB series or PS5.

It's the lack of disc drive and small drive that's putting me off buying the console. Even 1TB for me seems small. It was too small for my PS3, and I'm lucky enough to have 2TB on my Wii U and 360. And I'd like 1TB on my Switch but those cards are expensive too. At least with all these I have the option of physical media.

@playstation_king I've noticed many people have told me that about 2 certain people. I haven't run into the 3rd......yet.

@BlueOcean I agree as I believe the series S will outsell the xbox series X and give the ps5 a good run for its money, now if the series S also had a disk drive then I belive it would of sold maybe twice as what it will, only problem I see is the 500gb storage as the size of games are getting to be 50GB+ with some games like Red dead and call of duty being over 100GB imagine the size of those two being on next gen, and the price of an extra or bigger custom ssd costing around £170 minimum you may aswell get the series X

@playstation_king However, Series S will use HD texture packs. PS5 has a 825GB SSD, somewhere between Series S and X. Whatever console you get, you have limited storage (best is Series X).

On Series X and S you can store and run Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games on an external HDD and you can store Series games on it as well and move them to the SSD when you want to play them. I expect a similar thing on PS5. Until expansion cards/PS5 external SDDs become cheaper, the majority of users are going to move or even re-download games.

@BlueOcean yeah to be honest it's another reason for all 4 next gen consoles to rake in more money by selling their custom ssds to get back some of the money they are losing out of due to selling at a loss.

@Richnj wow 2TB for your wii u? That's like the entire wii u library lol and yeah I've been wanting a bigger card for my switch aswell but too pricey, I keep thinking for the price of the sd card I want I can buy a few new switch games 😂

@playstation_king If you consider how expensive and advanced these SSDs are (PS5 the most), the limited storage capacity makes sense. If you were to buy a 1TB Seagate Expansion Card or a 825GB additional SSD for Xbox/PS5 now, it would be quite expensive, more for you than for Microsoft or Sony because they have bought whole stocks and you will go to Game/Amazon/whatever.

The positive part of the story is that in a few years, the external solutions will be more affordable for everybody. That's when buying them will make sense for most users. The new consoles are expansion-ready but few people are going to expand them now.

@Z3u5000

Yea I ignored that Pony troll long ago. Sad little man with nothing better to do. 😂

@BlueOcean yeah that's what's scaring me the cost of the ps5 ssd as I will mostly likely need and extra one day one, I play a lot of multiplayer games regularly on my ps4, I have Rocket league
Fortnite
Apex legends
Overwatch
Rainbow six siege
Star wars battlefront 2
Dead by daylight
Smite
PvZBFN
Paladins
Destiny 2
Black desert online
Monster hunter world
Hunt Showdown
Fall guys
And they alone take up around 550GB, god to think the size of these when they land with next gen upgrades, going to be one expensive gen for me thats for sure, but hopefully your are right and sooner rather than later there are cheaper options on the market

G

The thing that no one is taking into account is the way the system is design and by system I mean marketing system structure.

Basically, MS is still selling the Xbox 1 S as the entry level device. At some point, there will be a hardware refresh, slim line, whatever, and at this point Series S will replace it as the entry level device. By the time, a bottleneck would occur; it won’t matter.

As for devs, contrary to popular thought, they actually design first for the system that makes the most sense. Which is usually the most popular system, then go from there. A good example Control? Definitely a game not meant to run on the VCR XBONE. Besides which at the moment most indie devs design for Switch hardware.

Anyway, I think people need to chill and see how it all plays out before worrying.

@KelticDevil Didn’t his game which he was touting for 2 sec loading got delayed yesterday till next year? 🤣

I CAN'T BELIEVE PEOPLE WHO $#it$ ON INFINITE'S DELAY ARE PRAISING THIS.

@Xiovanni I don’t know why people are absolutely ignorant about the official gameplay demo video where Jason Ronald clearly states the console’s meant to render at 1440p60/120fps.
"eats the past-gen Xbox One X alive, and it really is no contest."
It actually does. One X can’t run at such fidelity and efficiency even in lower resolution due to presence of several last-gen bottlenecks. There’s only one actual so called “One X enhancement” i.e native 4K rendering for which it is not designed in-line which is clearly stated in the official gameplay. The “Series S” moniker already indicates to be designed for next-gen upgrade (higher world fidelity, fps, loading, ray tracing, mesh shading, XVA etc) over One S is likely to match it’s price segment and market demographic where 1080p/1440p displays still dominate by a huge margin. So this absolutely makes business sense to make a console for a different set of majority customers.

Here’s why a console designed for 1440p60fps/120fps should never really be ever concerned about running titles like RDR2 at native 4K render resolution when it is actually designed to achieve much more than mere resolution bump.

@Xiovanni Agree to disagree. All those games that have got a 4K upgrade will run at overall better fps and fidelity in 1440p which won’t be possible on One X due to several last gen bottlenecks. I know how IGN have gone with this weird speculation but the thing is if someone really wants to have the full fat 4k/8k enhancements they have to shell out more for the most powerful console Series X. But for a entry level price segment of 299$, Series S is going to be a pretty good enhancements for the vast majority who have 1080p/1440p displays.

Rendering 4K requires a 4K GPU and Series S has a 2K GPU designed for 1440p rendering. It isn't surprising that it renders at native 1440p. Have people seen Gears 5 running at 120 FPS on Series S? Series S will have no problems running next-gen games at 60 FPS. If you are concerned about native 4K, Series X is your console.

@Xiovanni However, it proves that Series S is next-gen at 1440p, that's the point. Why do you expect native 4K on Series S? It doesn't make any sense.

@BlueOcean You can only debate with someone who is ready to understand business decisions that go behind launching a hardware to match a large market demographic demand and price segment. Remember these were the same hypocrites who never gave a dime about full backcompat, native 4K, terraflop numbers etc. even few days ago. When they got bored playing games at blurry checkerboard 1440p@30fps RDR2, they would come here acting as some very concerned users with intention of twisting narratives if possible without any basic understanding of how next-gen optimisation features would work. For instance, Destiny 2 had a One X enhancement upgrade for which it ran at 4K30FPS but I would much prefer to see it running at 1440p/2K60fps at a better overall fidelity when it would be upgraded for Series S soon.

@Xiovanni I didn't say that 1440p TVs exist but even if you connect a 1440p source to a 1080p TV you get a better picture. It's called super-sampling. Many people have an Xbox One X connected to a 1080p TV and enjoy super-sampled graphics.

You can't jump to conclusions about the quality of the graphics of Series S just because of how backwards compatibility works on it. If you want to judge Series S graphics quality you have to use multiplatform games when they are released and compare the Series S, Series X and PS5 versions. The comparisons you are making are pointless.

@Z3u5000

That’s hilarious! 😂

@Z3u5000 @BlueOcean

Trying to argue with a troll @Xiovanni is like trying to piss into the wind. It’s pointless. He obviously doesn’t get it or understand why Series S will be a great console for people.

But at least you guys tried to help educate him. 👍🏻

@Z3u5000 Ah, my bad. I mistook an echo chamber for a comment section. Apparently anyone who doesn't blindly kiss Microsoft's ass is an X-Box hater who needs to get a life and is a troll.

Am I a troll when I'm pointing out that the man who questions the relevance and ability to keep up of a 4 TF console when standing next to a 10 TF and 12 TF one is the lead engineer of one of the best shooters in the market?

I'm not hiding my bias - I'm a Sony gamer first and foremost, and I'm lurking in both this website as well as Push Square. However, I can't help but see there is a tendency here to shoo! shoo! anyone who doesn't blindly bow to MS' every decision.

You probably think of yourself as a dedicated X-Box gamer who praises the console and thinks it'll be the best choice in this gen. I'll ask you this: Are you happy with what has been shown so far for the console? Are you happy that so far everything MS has shown on Series X are upgraded last-gen titles and AA indies to show off what the world's most powerful console can do? Did you look at Infinite's gameplay and your jaw hit the floor?

Other than the fact that MS basically allows you to play all major X-Box titles for free (which is nothing to scoff at, but is an option already available to X-Box consoles and PC), what else have they shown that made you go 'I just HAVE to get myself an XSX'?