Some Games Actually Load Faster On Xbox Series S, Says Phil Spencer

Visible Confusion

I mean yeah it makes sense. They both run at the same speed so loading a lower resolution and graphics is going to be faster. Not going to be a huge difference, but maybe you are looking at a couple of seconds.

That the series S can load 10gb of data faster than the series X can load 16gb should not be a surprise.

Can’t wait to see how my future Xbox Live Creators Program game will run on the Series S in comparison to the Xbox One.

Doesn't change my opinion - I wouldn't buy a console without a disc drive and certainly not willing to sacrifice visual quality for a few extra seconds saved on load times.

I don't find modern games that 'bad' on load times now. Loading a game up in 2.30mins (at worst) is NOTHING compared to load times from the 80's when you had games on Cassettes that you wouldn't even get the 'load' screen drawn in that time.

Of course I am not complaining if load times are significantly reduced as it seems they are, but to me who still remembers gaming with cassettes, its not the biggest priority to me and would prefer to have games that look much better as I will spend a LOT more time looking at the visuals in the game than waiting in loading screens - even with my XB1X, I spend little time in loading screens compared to the time I spend waiting for loads.

I know how 1440p and lower with lower res textures look on my 4k screen, I have a PS4 Pro as well as my XB1X LMAO

@BAMozzy I actually prefer the lower price, form factor, and specs.

If it weren't for the lack of disc drive, I would have bought a series S on day one. The disc drive is the one thing I'm not willing to sacrifice.

The Series S is a beast of it's own..

@Richnj Each to their own....

@BAMozzy it is indeed.

That's why I like the MS approach, and don't understand the PS5 approach. The S is a clear distinct option from the X, to cater to a different type of gamer, while the discless PS5 is just a discless PS5.

@Richnj I certainly agree with you on that aspect. It really is an distinct and different option for gamers compared to Sony's approach and I certainly don't have any criticism there at all. I know there will be many that want to play next gen games that are not bothered about having the 'highest' visual quality, many still with just HD TV's and, in this time, not wanting to spend £450 on a console...

My Son would be perfectly happy with a Series S as he doesn't have a 4k TV and I don't think he has bought a game on disc for years.

@Bruvas I used to set a game to load and go and do something else in another room whilst it loaded. It was frustrating coming back and finding the load screen had corrupted at some point earlier and you knew you would end up having to reload it again. You really had to almost pick a game to play and stick with it because swapping to a different game would be a 15+min wait - and now with Quick Resume, it can be 15s or less LOL

We have the beast and the mini beast
The series x beast for me all the way though.
Pre ordered and ready to go.

I like the principle of the Series S.
Will certainly sell a ton load considering the low price and your typical COD/Fortnite/FIFA players aren't exactly bothered about 4K graphics.

🤣 PC gamers have been used to getting all their games digitally and most have no disc drives on their gaming PCs. I never understand the old-fashioned mindset of console gamers and their love for discs. Someday, the disc drive will go away and there won’t be any more pieces of plastic to hoard/collect. 🥳

He also implied the next Xbox is being worked on already. So expect a Series X Pro or mini or both at some point.

@kingv84 I guess with consoles it’s worse being all digital because your locked into one eco system and have to pay whatever prices Microsoft or Sony set where as on PC you can shop around a bit more for better prices. And it’s similar with discs you can pickup games used for cheaper or trade and sell your games if you want to put it towards another game. For me on my PS4 I always did this as the store prices were way more than physical and when I don’t want the game I can sell it.

Hoping the S does perform as good as they say and literally is just lower resolution as I’m getting one. Mainly for a game pass machine/ backwards compatibility and I’ll buy a couple of the must have 3rd party’s to tide me over till I can afford the PS5.

@BAMozzy playing Doom Eternal in 4K on my XBOX ONE X and never finding loading times that bad. Totally agree with your comments.

I’m defo looking forward to faster loading times.

I'm now feeling a bit more confident about my Series S purchase! After seeing so much amazing Series X stuff lately, I was starting to worry I'd made the wrong choice.

@kingv84 it won’t happen until the price of digital games comes down to what they are on PC. You’re looking at £69.99 now on consoles at least for digital games, you cannot blame console gamers for wanting disc drives still when there is no incentive not to have one.

@kingv84 The last time I 'gamed' on PC, I bought physical versions of the games and liked the booklets, seeing my gaming collection grow on the shelf, seeing the artwork, feeling like I actually got something for my money.

I am still the same today - I still prefer a book, a magazine etc to a digital version, still prefer buying my music on CD's, still prefer buying my games on disc (especially collectors editions with real (not digital) artbooks and other 'real' bits and pieces. Still like to see my game collection grow on the shelf...

I'm getting an S but when things settle down after christmas. And to those complaining about no disc drive, you have to install games anyway so I just thought 'F it' and bought all my physical Xbox one games digitally when they were on sale. Going to put them towards the price of the Series S lol. Also digital means less game cases to clean when they get dusty with not being touched in ages.

@Richnj i was in the same camp. If the S had a disk drive i would have gotten it but since it doesn't I got the X. 23 days to go folks

@BAMozzy Well, yeah. The Series S is resolutely not aimed at people who care about 4K or collecting games physically (the latter is my sticking point; I'd have ordered one already if it was BC with 360/One games, as I'm not excited about the prospect of repurchasing my old 360 games, which I have a lot of). With that said, I do like that, even with the cheaper price, the Series S isn't an across-the-board downgrade from Series X.

@AJDarkstar If the size of the files are smaller because they are lower quality, then you don't need the bandwidth or the quantity of RAM. If the Files are half the size, then you need half the bandwidth and half the available RAM to store and stream the equivalent quantity to GPU in the same time.

Having the same speed SSD will help getting those files to RAM of course. My concern would be more the choices that devs may need to make - although as others have pointed out, those decisions are probably not important. Obviously the GPU is much smaller and slower (1/3rd) where as 4k is 2.2x the resolution so I think devs will have to turn visual settings down - although some may not be as noticeable as others - like draw distance where fewer pixel density due to resolution won't have enough pixels anyway to benefit having a longer draw distance. With just 20CU's, how will RT hold up. Will it impact on MS's decision to release Minecraft DXR (which was shown running at 1080/30 on a series X with 52cores)?

I know its not going to matter too much to those people who are already not bothered about resolution and visual settings - as long as the frame rates are as solid and no doubt a lot still have HD TV's but its clear to me that if the Xbox Series X is running at 4k with settings as high as possible and no spare overheads, the Series S probably will need to turn a few settings down lower to deliver 1440p at the same frame rate/performance just due to the big difference in GPU size and speed.

Again NOT saying its 'bad', its clearly better than an Xbox One X in CPU and the early indication is that the Series S (4TF) is offering 1440p/30 in Yakuza where the PS4 Pro (4.2TF) and XB1X (6TF) are both 1080/30 and the PS4 isn't exactly rock solid performance (although we still haven't seen exactly how the Series S performs) but that's quite a 'leap' up - that's a 178% resolution boost over the XB1X from something that is 50% 'smaller' albeit faster (40CUs at 1172Mhz vs 20CUs at 1565Mhz) so it will be very interesting to see how games actually compare when side by side.

Its certainly more impressive than I expected from something so small so it really shows how well designed it is and how much better RDNA 2.0 is as well. I still think its a shame that you only get the base XB1 options and not some of the XB1X options as some had 60fps modes for that system that could be transformative for gamers moving from a Base Xbox One but could also be a step back in some games if you are upgrading from a XB1X. Some of the games we have seen that are now running at a consistent 60fps on Series X via BC will still be 30fps on Series S just because they are only getting the XB1 (not X enhancements) version...

Again that may not matter at all to those purchasing the Series S

Well it’s not loading in bigger assets so...

@BAMozzy The thing about the S is its flexibility. It’s size and price makes it a great secondary console. Imagine you have to go between moms house and dads house? I can’t see a kid lugging a PS5 back a forth as easily. Also said kid likely doesn’t have 4K TV, so they don’t care about setting.

I agree; It is shame about the frame modes. I’m hoping that some of team goes back and tweaks that though. And they’ve played a lot of games, so I guess we shall see

My hope is someone makes a list of the older games and what the specs end up being for each.

@AJDarkstar But there is more available RAM and faster than the PS4 Pro - albeit just. The Series S is NOT an Xbox One X or a Series X - ie targetting 4k with 4k/hi res textures/assets so its not going to be shifting hundreds of high res textures that all add up to require a lot more RAM space and more bandwidth to stream into the game.

The Console was designed around '1440p' as which as I mentioned is 1.78x more than 1080p and 4k is 2.2x the size of 1440p. That's less than 50% the size.

Games optimised for Series S also use the Velocity Engine that includes Sampler Feedback Streaming meaning it only needs to download/stream in the textures that are actually being displayed - not those that may be out of view because of other objects in the way or perspectives, and only needs to download a part of the texture as often less its only a small portion used. In theory, that should cut down the amount of textures that are needlessly streamed in making it more efficient.

You perhaps can't compare with 'traditional' examples as this is a 'new' approach. 5.5GB at 216GB/s was all the PS4 Pro had for games and that was doing 4k - albeit with CB rendering a lot of the time but was often around 1440p. The XB1X was designed around 4k and 4k Textures hence it has more RAM and higher bandwidth.

The more you push onto the GPU to offset the CPU's failings, you also take away from the GPU's primary function which is to render and process the image. Generally, GPU's are much slower too - fewer cycles per second meaning each shader can do fewer floating point operations per second. The Slowest CPU from the current gen (excluding Switch) is the PS4 at 1600mhz (1.6Ghz) which is still faster than the Series S GPU (1565Mhz) so you are essentially moving tasks that are 'generally' better suited to the CPU to the GPU which is 'slower' but obviously if the CPU is being asked too much for it to cope with, then its a case of necessity. At least the CPU's this gen are multi-threaded and actually quite fast (the 360 was 3.2Hhz btw) and not having to handle decompression and audio processing which I expect was where a lot of the resources of the CPU were being eaten up before so forced devs to push asks to GPU.

@mousieone Not once have I said I do not see the point or attraction of the Series S. My Son doesn't have a 4k TV, travels quite a bit (or did before all this happened in the world), buys virtually all his games digitally and has Game Pass too so this would suit him far better than a Series X would at the moment. I can clearly see the attraction as a 'spare' or 2nd in the bedroom - even if you do have a 4k TV in there. I can clearly see the attraction for parents with Christmas coming too as I doubt many kids have a large 4k TV in their bedroom. I can clearly see the attraction for gamers who may well spend most of their time on another platform (Playstation, PC, Mobile) and not worth spending the extra £200 for 'better' visuals for the amount of use it will get and clearly see the attraction for any more casual gamer looking for a cheap plug and play device to go with a game pass subscription.

I totally understand why this console makes sense in the market, clearly understand why MS expects it to sell far more as the amount of gamers that really want the 'best' console experience and have the tech or at least the money to get the tech to go with it (4k HDR TV) are 'greatly' outnumbered by the people who fit into the categories I mentioned above. Its a 'perfect' console for anyone who only wants a console for Game Pass and/or Gaming on a budget.

My initial point was that I don't fit into any of those categories that this was 'really' designed for and that I couldn't care less about shaving off a second or two at the expense of visual quality. I have owned a 4k TV since 2014 and a HDR Premium rated 4k HDR TV since 2016 so why would I want to 'feed' it a 'lower' quality image when an option exists to offer a Higher Quality image.

The fact is though is that its less than half the GPU size, less than 2/5ths the size with a slower clock speed that overall means its GPU is slightly under 1/3rd that of the Series X yet 1440p is 4/9ths the size of 4k. Something that is 0.333 being asked to hit 0.444 the size essentially so further 'tweaks' to visual settings are going to be necessary - in other words, if the Series X is 4k with all settings on High, the Series S would certainly have to turn a few settings down to medium to hit 1440p. When compared to current gen, it may outperform them at 30fps, more operations per 1frame as its faster, but quite a lot fewer CUs 20 vs Pro's 36 or X's 40, but they were '4k' consoles and this is a 1440p console.

I thought it would be more as a high frame rate 1080p console with extra bells and whistles - inc some hybrid RT so for MS to come out and say its a 1440p console, it surprised me. It seemed 'odd' that they would pick that resolution as TV's tend to be 1080 or 4k (I know gaming monitors can be 1440p and may well be a great option for a relatively inexpensive S gaming set up) so I thought 1080p with little no compromise, more than enough RAM for HD gaming and using its 'power' to throw more frames out. Making it out as a 1440p console means that 'every' game, regardless of frame rate that is under that will now be seen as evidence of its weakness...

Anyway, I have rambled - point is, I see its purpose, surprised they set it up as a 1440p which also seems 'stuck' between HD and 4k TV's and interested to see how it really does in side by side.

I'm getting a Series X as my main console, i want all those pixels shining on the 85" tv i plan to buy to go with it.

I might, at a later point, get a Series S, my partner is not as obsessed as me about pixel count (they still happy with the base PS4 for all their games) and would be a good way to share digital games.

@BAMozzy umm I was agreeing with you not disagree with you. I can totally understand why the system makes little sense for someone like you.sorry if it didn’t sound that way.

@graysoncharles The SSD speed is the rate at which data can be transferred from the SSD to the RAM. The RAM speed is the amount of time it takes for GPU or CPU to read the RAM.

As an analogy imagine someone ask me to paint fluffy. I need to find fluffy’s description which would take the same amount of time on both systems. I need to copy cat description from my book of descriptions to the card on the top of my easel.

For the Xbox series X it will be a 12 word description for the series S it will be a 8 word description so in this case for series S would load in 2/3 of the time. As I draw my picture I need to constantly read words from the description this takes twice as long on the series S because of the slow RAM but because there are less words this balances out and we maintain the same frame rate.

The cost of the series S is that it draws the worst picture. But it loads faster because I don’t need to tell it the tips of my kitties ears are white. Because you wouldn’t be able to see it anyway at the lower resolution.

@AJDarkstar I saw an interview with Dirt 5 developers that said in their game enabling multithreading was the difference between 60 and 100 frames per second. The benefits for properly multithreaded applications are clear. But I can’t answer how many will actually need for additional performance.

@graysoncharles yeah I can’t speak for Xbox sales but for PlayStation most of the sales were always still more expensive than buying physical bar the big sales... But yeah the Series S is great value for me with game pass you can’t go wrong! Still prefer a disc drive but definitely not complaining for the price of the console and game pass, it’s converting me to digital for now lol but I have always preferred physical. But yeah pros and cons for each, just what you prefer.

@AJDarkstar The series S can be 30% smaller but the texture size drop can be much much higher. Certain files - like audio and the game code are still going to be the same regardless as you are not getting a lower quality audio experience or half the game. Some files will not be any smaller at all so these still take up the same space.

If you have a 100GB game install on Series X for example and 50% of that is 'exactly' the same size on disc, therefore take up 50GB on both Systems, and the other 50% is lower res textures for example, on Series S they would take up 20GB - so 70GB on Series S in total.

That would mean that the drop from 50GB to 20GB is 60% but overall, from 100GB to 70GB is a net saving of 30%. in this scenario, a 10MB high res texture would be just 4MB on Series S so the RAM - both quantity and bandwidth is more than enough because you are not streaming and storing 100's of 10MB texture files, now its 100's of 4MB texture files.

I really do expect devs to utilise MT CPU's - there is literally no reason not to with PC's and PS4 all having MT enabled CPUs so its only 'legacy' games and devs with perhaps not the experience or budget to use. It will become the standard because that's what ALL the hardware has. In the near future, until they are up to speed and of course with legacy BC games, single thread is more important right now.

I don't think they can switch half on and half off for example BUT maybe they have built in some custom method of doing so - I doubt it though - doesn't serve any real purpose.

The whole reason you free up the CPU cores by allocating work flow to the GPU is because the CPU cores are too busy to do the work themselves and by doing so, it means that the workflow isn't held up later in the pipeline. If the CPU is really busy decompressing files, you don't want to wait until that's finished to calculate physics or AI and then tell the GPU what to do, you want the CPU with that data already to go and the soonest moment - even if the CPU can do all that much quicker and more efficiently IF it wasn't trying to decompress files. Its like getting an artist to programme a computer because the IT guys are busy bringing all the paint in and when the paint is in, the Programme is ready for the IT guys to then tell the artist exactly what to paint because the Programme is ready for them. Its not using the 'best' person to programme, but its better than it not being done at all until after all the materials are ready. Its about maximising the pipeline with limited resources.

@Tharsman
85 inch screen??? TV sizes are becoming comical. I have a 55" screen. Part of me still thinks that seems ridiculous.

@Akimi It is ridiculous, i admit. I insist on a TV Stand, dont want to set a mount on my walls, but finding a TV Stand large enough is actually hard 😅

I'm looking right now at the Samsung 85" Q80T, has all the features to make a Series X shine 😎

@AJDarkstar you are missing the point - the textures are lower res and smaller in size

A low resolution texture, which is anything below 1024x1024, is what you would see in games from the seventh generation(Xbox 360 and PS3) and down. These low resolution textures were often blurry with minimal amounts of detail to get across to you what they were. Textures that were clean and simple often looked better than their more detailed counterparts at the same size because there wasn’t anything to really blur.

Sitting at the top are the high resolution textures(1024x1024(1K), 2048x2048(2K), 4096x4096(4K), and 8192x8192(8K)). The higher the resolution, the clearer the texture and the more minor details you could add.

However this really increases the size per texture BEFORE any compression. A 4k Texture is literally 4x the size before you compress and my figures were purely to illustrate that some aspects of a game will be the same size on BOTH systems so to get a 'net' reduction, the things that can be shrunk, would need to more than 30% overall to get a NETT saving.

It was based purely to show that overall, the textures would be much greater reduction in size than 30% because other areas would get NO reduction. My figures were NOT based on fact - just picked figures to purely illustrate that if a portion of the game has to remain the same size, the parts that can be reduced would be reduced by more than 30% to make the overall nett reduction 30%

IF the only part than can be reduced is the textures by using smaller files, in that scenario where 50% are textures, a 30% drop from 50GB would leave 35GB - add that to the 50GB that has to be the same size on both 100GB becomes 85GB on S - a 15% reduction IN THIS ILLUSTRATION. However they are saying Game installs are 30% smaller on S so they must be reducing the texture files by a LOT more than just 30% because aspects cannot be reduced in quality - like Audio Files, Game code etc that would all be the same size on BOTH S and X