We're now fast approaching the release of Alan Wake 2 for Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S in late October, and ahead of the launch, Remedy Communications Director Thomas Puha has been speaking with IGN about what to expect from the game's 60FPS performance mode, as well as the limitations posed by the Series S specifically.
In regards to the Series S, Puha explained there are two main challenges that the console serves up during development in the form of the lower GPU and memory compared to the Xbox Series X. Here's a bit of what he had to say:
"Choosing my words carefully here... we like Xbox, we like Sony."
"With Series S, the CPU is pretty much the same as on Series X, there's not a massive difference. But the GPU is an issue, it really is. And then, having less memory is a pretty big problem. And we often get, 'hey, you make PC games, surely you know how to scale?'. Well, memory is not a problem on PC, it really isn't..."
Puha went on to highlight that it's a lot easier to scale for PC (partly because the team is so experienced at it), but Remedy has nevertheless put in a huge amount of effort into ensuring that Alan Wake 2 will run well on Xbox Series S:
"Obviously there's a massive difference in power [between Xbox Series X and Series S], so it's a lot easier to scale on the PC because of memory - and it's not like there's one super PC and one weaker PC, there's like 300 PC configurations in-between, and trust me, that's a massive struggle but we've shipped a lot of PC [games] so we're a bit better about that."
"We've really worked hard on getting Series S to run at a solid 30FPS and trying to maintain a good visual quality, but if you want to see the game at its best in full next-gen form then it's going to be on the machines that have the hardware to enable that."
To be honest, none of this comes as much of a surprise to us. We've long known that the GPU and memory in the Series S aren't as capable as the Series X, and ultimately a "next-gen" console that's as cheap as the Series S has to have a few trade-offs somewhere! Despite this, it's great to hear that Alan Wake 2 should be a "solid" experience on the console.
Elsewhere in the interview, Puha talked about the 60FPS performance mode for Alan Wake 2 on Xbox Series X and why he's super impressed by it (but still prefers playing at 30FPS), along with various other topics.
You can check out the full discussion in the video above, but we've timestamped it to begin at the Series S part. Enjoy!