Xbox Engineer Explains Why Smart Delivery Forces Series X|S Version

So they just aren't doing it, not that they can't.

I am personally of the opinion that XBOX have this right and I am very happy that the correct version is delivered, sure you might occasionally get a higher frame rate if you play the last gen versions of a game on current gen, but these examples are rare and really shouldn't be encouraged..... optimise the current gen version developers! We should never have to downgrade to the Xbox One version to get a more stable frame rate, that's crazy! We have so much more CPU and GPU power now, use it properly devs!

I want a current gen version of a game if it's available, that's why I bought a new console.

Also storage isn't that much of an issue, the last gen version won't be thaaat much less and you can move games on and off external storage pretty quickly and easily. HDD's or even a memory stick are cheap options for backup storage. All previous gen games can be played from external HDD and proper management of storage means it's not an issue.

Back to Smart Delivery, I feel that this is not something that MS should be criticised for, they should actually be thanked, Smart Delivery is a seamless and stress free way of getting what you should be getting. Simple.

Unfortunately this is no excuse. There are too many games that have no business requiring the SSD to be used. And plenty others that perform better as the previous gen version.

Forcing a specific version goes against the whole idea of player choice Microsoft has been trying to pedal this generation.

I bought a Series X to play Series X versions of games. Its just like I bought a XB1X to get 'enhanced' visuals and/or frame rates instead of having to put up with XB1S limitations.

I really appreciate 'smart' delivery as that means I get the 'version' built for my hardware choice and not having 'downgraded' visuals. I know that 'Elden Ring' doesn't perform 'well' on Series X (or PS5) and a 'workaround' on PS5 was to play the PS4 Pro version via BC, but at the expensive of Visual quality.

To me, that is an issue with the work of the Developer - NOT an issue for Xbox/Smart Delivery. The fact that the game(s) are not stable enough that people would rather play a 'downscaled' version just to get better performance is much more a reflection on the Developers.

As for SSD space, yes it is somewhat 'limited' but the fact you can connect a regular HDD and move them with relative ease as well as options to increase the SSD storage (albeit more expensive per TB) with a simple 'plug & play' option that can easily be swapped without even needing to switch off, let alone needing to dismantle your console offsets some of that issue.

In my opinion, BC is for games that haven't been 'optimised' for Series S/X games and if you have to go 'backwards' to try and get better performance whilst sacrificing the 'benefits' the Series S/X version offers (inc Loading times from SSD's), then that is more about the 'state' of the game and the fault of the developers.

With Game Pass Ultimate, you can stream games too - to see if they are 'worth' creating space on your limited SSD beforehand. I do have a 1TB expansion card and a 5TB HDD plugged into my Series X. Even before I purchased the Expansion, I could easily have more Series X games stored on my SSD than Quick Resume can keep open - meaning I could have a dozen or so games 'on the go' - ready to jump straight into without needing to 'juggle' games. Adding the extra 1TB means I can have even more games 'on the go' - far more than I actually 'play' - in fact some games are 'finished' but still on my SSD and haven't been played for a year or more - so if I 'need' room, I could easily move to HDD or delete...

@JetmanUK
Totally agree give me the Xbox series x version
That’s what I bought the console for.
Microsoft are doing dam well on all this, you just can’t please some people.
Perhaps they should be time travelled back to 80s and 90s gaming, then they would realise how really spoilt we are now.

I'm perfectly fine with it. If you're playing last gen versions to squeeze out extra performance, perhaps its time to move on to PC gaming.

@InterceptorAlpha How would anyone know if a previous gen version performs better if you can't install it on the newer machine?

@Dezzy70 Kids today couldn't cope with gaming in the 80's - especially not for the more 'adult' gaming experiences on 'Home Computers' with Tape Decks.

They complain now if loading takes a minute or having to wait a few extra seconds for the title screen to go. Back in the 80's, the title screen could easily take 5mins or more - drawing each line slowly until the full image was displayed (if you were lucky as sometimes this would be corrupted) and then still had to wait 10mins to see if the actual game loaded properly. jumping from 1 game to the next could take enough time to go have dinner.

You'd be lucky if you got more than 10-15fps in some games. Even games like Goldeneye, often named as one of the greatest games made, didn't hit 30fps and in MP, an average of 15fps was 'normal'.

You didn't have 'games' stored that could be 'instantly' accessible and 'every' time you changed game, it required you to swap the media it was stored on, wait for it to load etc. Even game saves required you to buy a 'memory' card.

If you wanted to play games like BF4, CoD: Ghosts, AC4 (or any cross gen releases) you had to buy the specific version for the hardware. If games had BC, then the best you could hope for was the 'same' experience as playing on Original hardware - no res boosts, auto HDR, performance gains etc...

Things are so much better now!

@NEStalgia Easy, you install it while disconnected from Xbox Live.

Alternatively, install while connected to Xbox live, delete updates, then disconnect and fire it up.

Smart Delivery is a developer's choice.

I love it! I have zero desire to run the Xbox One X version of a game on my Series X if a Series X version is available.

Great example: Tiny Tina's Wonderlands.

I was at PAX East last week and I wanted to try the game out at the "Console Free Play" area. It does not support Smart Delivery (I had no idea, I just wanted to try it because EVERYONE was talking about it - especially after the Gearbox presentation).

When I got the game to play on the Series X, I played the game in Performance Mode and noticed the resolution was like 1080p. I didn't necessarily mind; but the resolution hit did surprise me.

My friend (who has the Series X version) was puzzled why the game looked so "bad". I told him I have it in Performance Mode for 60fps. I switched it over to Resolution Mode and it ran at 30fps (and felt noticeably more sluggish). He was puzzled more why it ran so slow.

Turns out, the version I played was the last-gen version and was running the Xbox One X variant of the game. The Series X version is dynamic 4K/60 or...I believe dynamic 1440p/120.

Why would I want the One X version knowing that the Series X version is vastly superior in both resolution and framerate?

Also, as far as Elden Ring, Digital Foundry did a test of the One X version of Elden Ring on the Series X and it was clearly not optimized for the Series X. Didn't run any better than the One X version - I think even running worse in some scenarios (but don't remember).

Bottom line - developers do need to still need to test and optimize the last-gen version to run on current-gen consoles if they don't want to use Smart Delivery.

Feels like a waste of resources to test last-gen if a current-gen version is available, so why they don't all use Smart Delivery is beyond me (other than an excuse to charge extra).

There was nothing necessarily wrong with Tiny Tina's Wonderlands - it ran the last-gen version well with the intended settings - but clearly not ideal compared to the current-gen version.

The "workaround" is deleting or moving games around. You don't need 32 games on your ssd. Especially if you havent played some, in quite some time.
Who knew smart delivery was gonna be a bother for some people.

@BAMozzy
Thank you for the trip down memory lane to my child hood with the Atari 2600, then Commodore 64 and so on.
Those were the days, console wars even existed then then Commodore 64 Vs Spectrum 48k. 😂😂😂

Why would I ever want to play the last gen version of a game on my new console? Makes no sense to me. Its easy enough to delete games and install when you want to play them, there's more than enough space to have a good amount of games installed

I hate this policy. Really took the perceived joy out of Dying Light 2 when I learned I couldnt play with my friends on last gen. I hate the 10 dollar upgrades on playstation as well but atleast I get to choose which version I can install on my 5. Honestly this is simply a poor excuse, just give us both versions of the game and let us decide which one to install at our leisure. Still love my series X though and this is a minor gripe to be honest.

@carlos82 if you play with friends and cross gen isnt supported it would be nice to have the OPTION to choose instead of being ramrodded into it. I have a series X and a one X in my home. I buy games to play with my wife so when cross gen isnt supported I have no other options.

Not really a problem for the myriad of people playing from One X to Series X.

The correct compromise here is to make optional the downloadable upgrades for 4K assets, just as we begged them to do for One X. I still have a 1080p screen for Pete's sake.

Anyway, this is the least of my concerns for the system, so I'll leave it at that.

@Dezzy70 and before that with the Vic 20 and Sinclair ZX80/1...

I don't miss those days. I remember spending hours and hours typing out code to make games like Snake on my Vic 20 but sometimes, something in the code was 'wrong' and you'd waste hours going through each line and checking against the book, but if there was something wrong with the book, it was such a waste of time...

The amount of times I'd leave a game to Load whilst I went and did something else, only to come back and find that something went wrong and have to start again...

Thankfully, those days are LONG gone!!!

@BAMozzy Please ease up with the excessive apostrophes (aka "single quotation marks" or whatever). I believe we've already commented on that quirk on this website.

However, unlike last time - when I mentioned that it makes the argument strangely seem simultaneously this and that (e.g. satirical and uncertain) - I didn't allude to how it could make a reader feel. That practice makes it seem like we're all misunderstanding things and/or using incorrect terminology (even if only slightly incorrect). It therefore comes across as condescending.

@Jark In the 'politest' way I possibly can - NO!!!

Please ease up with 'criticising' how other people wish to 'format' their comments and as they have the 'freedom' to do so, especially as its NOT contravening any SITE RULES, do what I am now about to do to you and put ALL your comments on 'ignore' so that you don't have to 'read' them anymore!!!

If you don't like it, tough!!!! LEARN to ACCEPT others - including their 'quirks' or 'differences' and then you'll be a much better 'human' especially if they are not doing anything 'harmful' to others or the community!!!

@BAMozzy
Good times, remember typing in code from magazines and checking over and over again and found a “,” missing 😂
Yes the old Vic 20.
Then it went all NES and Sega Master System.
I also had a Neo Geo for a good while.

@Dezzy70 I believe the reason people this even gets brought this up is really a special case scenario. I can't remember what game it was but the PS5 allowed a game to run 4K60 due to the unlocked framerate of the older version of the game where the Series X version could only run the game at 4K30 or a reduced resolution at 60. It lost some details but some argued that it was worth the 60FPS. But I believe this was the only occurrence I've seen that makes a valid argument as to why having the option to turn it off for a particular game. In the end this would easily be solved with another mode available for the Series X to allow for things like this. I'm not one of those 60 FPS fanatics, but I know it's important to others. I do think they made the right move though, Smart Delivery works really well.

@iplaygamesnstuff
There probably is small case for it for a small minority but hey, series consoles features overall have been magnificent.

@BAMozzy No. Wrong on all accounts, oops, sorry for being polite.

Image quality is not directly linked to resolution. You can have a PS1 era game run at 4k/60 on modern hardware - but still looks like a game from that era due to low polygon counts, low quality textures, pop in a poor draw distances, not great lighting or shadows, sparse environments etc etc.

I'd rather play a 'modern' game with superb lighting, high quality assets with 'high' polygon counts, great draw distances with no 'off putting' pop-in and transitions from lower quality assets as you get closer, etc etc at lower resolution and 'upscaled' or temporally reconstructed to 4k.

The difference in the image quality between Forza Horizon 5 on XB1S to XB1X isn't 'just' the jump in resolution, its the granular details and much richer environment filled with much more 'life'.

If a game can't 'run' at the target frame rate, that is down to the developers and their decisions to release the game in that way for the Hardware. You should not have to use a build designed for much weaker hardware to get the performance, and gets that 'performance' purely because it was designed to run with much less CPU, GPU and RAM. That game was 'optimised' and limited by that systems specs. Whether that means using lower quality assets/textures due to limited RAM - especially as they move further away from the camera, reducing the workload the CPU has to do - like reduce the number of objects the CPU has to call in,reduce the physics, the particles etc - anything to run on a mobile CPU and/or reduce the complexity of the image to give the GPU some chance...

As I said, if a game doesn't run at the target frame rate, that is the FAULT of the developers and you shouldn't have to play the last gen version just to get a reasonable/playable frame rate.

I'm sure the fact that the Xbox Series only takes proprietary SSDs is a coincidence.

That response is peak Microsoft - this is the same company that has for the last decade or two been pushing towards forcibly taking control over the guts of their Windows OS away from the end user because they don't think they can be trusted with them. And sure, consoles are a very different sort of beast when it comes to consent and user freedom, but this smacks of the exact same philosophy.

At the risk of sounding preachy, in the Microsoft ecosystem, customers aren't independent individuals with control over their own systems, but rather zero-salary employees to be managed and administrated like any other. Been that way since they shot themselves in the foot with the pre-lauch game-licensing debacles of the Xbox One, been that way even longer in Windows, still that way today.

Sometimes I'm not too bothered about having the best version on my Series X; when I only play a game maybe one of twice a month with my mates online - World of Tanks/Warships/Modern Warfare, I'm happy to play with XB1X version off an external HDD rather than have a couple of hundred GB taken up with them on my internal drive. Each of these games is pretty big & with MW being 238gb takes well over an hour to copy from HDD to SSD
Plus surely some games do not need to be run from SSD eg Pinkman, Two Kingdoms. Also there is no consistency with the 10mb unlock keys for DLC - some must be installed on the SSD whereas some will happily work off an external HDD with the base game on the SDD
At least give us the option to install which version we want to play, especially if you regularly swap external drives between XB1X & Series X

So we want next gen upgrades for free as well as last gen downgrades. Getting a bit silly

Honestly I don't see the reason for this at all. Even with the space on SSD thing. Why bother to spend money on a Series X at all if you play Xbox One versions of games? Just buy the One instead.
I just don't get this.

Perfectly fine with how this works.

@InterceptorAlpha

There actually are some games that are optimized on X/S that run off of external storage. Ori, Sea of Thieves, MCC and a few others.

@darro87 I'm aware. You can check this in the game details itself.

However, there are a lot of games that require a SSD after something as simple as a frame rate boost now, when it should still be bale to be ran off an external.