Moto5

@BAMozzy I do agree that a game build ground up for the XSS can be, and is perfectly fine. In the case of Doom Eternal RT is a added feature that is not necessary, but that is not true for all games. 4A's Metro Exodus Enhanced is a good example, it uses RT for global illumination. It also looks good and and has amazingly lit scenes over the standard lit version because of it. Without RT in the enhanced version you wouldn't be able to see anything (or barely anything). The problem I have with the XSS is that developers have to release on it if they want the game on XSX. Is takes more time, more money and could limit the game in some ways. May be having less games coming to Xbox because of this too. It might be hard for some devs to rationalize doing that when Sony is offering $$$ to be exclusive and only has one next gen platform to target, saving time and money

@bobbypaycheque You seem seem to willfully misinterpret things. There is no contradiction. Some game are more RAM intensive and some GPU. That was even talked about by Remedy and 4A. Not all games make the same demand on hardware, but I guess you fail to understand that. ID Software said they couldn't implement RT in Doom Eternal on XSS because of ram limitations as well. Their engine is very efficient on GPU and runs very fast on PC, so maybe that could be why they didn't mention GPU as a limit for them. And as far as the quality of those developers go, games from all 3 consistently score well and all have been considered very good looking for many many years.

Also a rx5600 is around 60% or more capable than XSS. I wouldn't expect you to look at numbers or specs though. I'm sure you know better than AMD on this as well

@bobbypaycheque the best at advanced rendering. Nice try on distorting what I said though. Here are links to the comments I quoted. Not that you probably care to read, it seems you already believe you know more than people that make games

https://wccftech.com/id-software-devs-concerns-xbox-series-s-specs/

https://www.vgchartz.com/article/447996/remedy-xbox-series-s-optimization-isnt-as-simple-as-lowering-resolution-and-texture-quality/

https://wccftech.com/xbox-series-s-ram-not-an-issue-but-gpu-performance-presents-challenges-for-future-titles-4a-games/

@Kaloudz Yeah, blocking with the pistol was ridiculous. How he cut down those big wooden posts like they where made out of chocolate cake was almost worse to me though. The chainsaw must have 200hp and spin up to 250000RPM!

Though the chainsaw bit at the end was kind of an eye roller.... oh well, I've seen worse

Very excited for this!!! I still remember getting up at 4am and driving 200km to pick this up on release day for GameCube

@After10Ben He's not too bad. I got into a similar discussion on YouTube and was told to leave by the video creator after I mentioned ID Softwares comments on Series S

@BANJO I agree with that 100%, the future is hard to imagine for XSS. I think Xbox may have thought cloud gaming would be more popular by now so the XSS low spec wouldn't be as much of an issue for the future. Would be nice if they let devs do a cloud version for it so things can move a head faster and be un hindered on the XSX

@SplooshDmg exactly. I put a few examples of the most played games on Steam. Most can be played with the integrated graphics unit on a 10 year old laptop. People making these comparisons are not really understanding or looking at what the situation is. Plus a 1060 probably comparable to or faster than a XSS anyway, so the comparisons are a failure in that regard as well

@Jireland92 have the Switch for that. Series S was advertised as "next gen at lower resolutions" Doesn't seem very next gen if developers have to spend more time, money and make huge compromises or completely discard some rendering features and make up new stuff because of one oddball console. May as well just go make xbox one and one x games

@bobbypaycheque go look at the top 20 games played on Steam. Rust, Terraria, Sims, PubG, Apex.... the hardest one to run is probably Destiny 2 and that's not hard and an older game. Your example is not relevant to next gen gaming on console. Really a 1060 is over kill for the most played games on Steam.

Have you not seen what the best devs have said about the Series S?

@SplooshDmg yes, just because it works on a PC doesn't mean it works well. Same with Steam Deck. It is up to the consumer to make choices between performance and fidelity with PC, this is not expected as much with console games. I have settled on setting for a PC game, then have had to change them playing through the game to accommodate new loads presented. Console settings try and take this into account for the whole game in every situation. These people talking about min spec PC stuff seem to be looking at older games and not considering how bad the performance can be. The XSS is below min spec for some of these games, let alone for future games

@Jireland92 of course it comes down to optimization. But that takes time and $$$ and can effect art direction and world building in these games. Not every developer is going to be able to rebuild their engine because it is GPU or RAM heavy. For example, maybe a developer have ray traced reflections and GI working on XSX but can not on XSS even when dropping down to 480p. Now they have to go and hand place light probes, rethink textures, consider the limits of cube mapped or SS reflections and change how the world looks because of all that. Games that have been developed around PC engines could be severely crippled in the future because of this. Will also limit creativity in design and cost more $$$ to develop

May as well just keep going, I'm sure a few people here actually care about what the people that make these games say. This is from 4A, developers of Metro Exodus. Pretty sure it is the only game on XSS that has ray traced GI. Another highly regarded developer for high end rendering.

"The RAM is not an issue for us (currently), but GPU performance presents challenges for future titles. Our current renderer is designed for high spatial and temporal resolution," said Shyshkovtsov.

"It is stochastic by nature. Dropping any of those would require us to do more expensive calculations dropping performance even further. We have a compromise solution right now, but I am not satisfied with it yet."

Here is a comment from Remedy for everyone saying just drop the resolution for Series S. Seems in line with what lead engine programmer at ID said. Guess people in the comments here know more about cutting edge game development that these guys.

"Xbox Series S, well, it's no different from the previous generations where the system with the lowest specs does end up dictating a few of the things that you're gonna do, because you're gonna have to run on that system, right? It's very easy to say that you just lower your resolution and texture quality and off you go, it's just nowhere near that simple.

It sounds good when you say it, but every engine is built in a different way. It's another thing when gamers might be like 'This game engine does all of these things!', well, it depends. Are you making an engine that's much more GPU bound or CPU bound? Which are you taxing a whole lot more? Well, we kind of tax both in Control because we have a lot of physics but then we have a lot of the ray tracing effects. That makes a huge, huge difference, especially on Xbox Series S"

@Tharsman you assume they just sat on the 60fps mode for months? You don't think maybe they were working hard to get it out? When you say baseless junk like that why wouldn't I assume you where serious about the 30 series comment?

As for your comment about it being the artists complaining...

“The much lower amount of memory and the split memory banks with drastically slower speeds will be a major issue. Aggressively lowering the render resolutions will marginally help but will not completely counteract the deficiencies.”

That was the Lead Engine Programmer at ID Software. Xbox owned studio and one of the most highly regarded studios for optimized performance and advance rendering

@Titntin I have played it for a few hours. I like the story and characters so far. But the combat and controls feel slow, frustrating and repetitive. It is also the most empty and boring open world I have experienced. Resolution and textures are good, but otherwise looks and feels worse than Arkham Knight. I'm not surprised, but still disappointed

*Also way too many loading screens that last for too long. Makes the tedious gameplay worse as going in and out of buildings becomes very annoying. It feels like a mediocre One X game in every way I can think of.

@Tharsman That is a ridiculous thing to say. The lowest RTX 30 card is still well over 2x the power of a XSS. XSS is more comparable to 1650 super. What developers try to push 4k resolution on XSS? Sounds like you are just making stuff up now

@BAMozzy so barely 50% more ram and well less than 50% faster ram than a machine that was released in 2013 and considered underspec back then. Ram is not just used for textures either. RT uses more ram among other game/rendering features. XSS is very strong with SSD and CPU, but that doesn't mean those factors will carry it through games that are RAM or GPU heavy. There have been many well regarded dev studios that have identified these short comings. Even ID Software, I believe they are the only Xbox studio that have implemented RT on console games. Why would one of the most talented developers in modern rendering (and is an Xbox studio) say stuff like that if it wasn't true?

@Widey85 Gotham Knights is a pretty bad example. If anything is suggests a lack of optimization for Series X. It looks worse in many ways than the Arkam games and has bad frame pacing. Could have been released 6 years and would have fit right in with games of that time

@BAMozzy Speaking of ram, that is one area the XSS is left behind by some older consoles.
Ps4 is 8gb 256 bit, 176 Gb/s.

ps4 pro is 8gb 256 bit 217.6 Gb/s

One X is 12gb 384 bit 326.4 GB/s

Series S is 8gb 128 bit 224 Gb/s and 2gb 32 bit 56 Gb/s

Remedy (developers of Control) 4A Games (developers of Metro Exodus) ID Software (Xbox studio and developers of Doom Eternal) have all make public statements about how the XSS is hard to get newer games working well on. Memory and gpu have been specified. Cyberpunk and Dying Light 2 also took a while to get 60fps modes indicating some possible difficulty. XSS falls under the pc minimum requirements for some games, so that may be why it is not as simple as moving settings around

@Titntin The title got me too, thought it was going to be a list of the top 10 games developed or published by Xbox. Lazy article anyway, anyone can go to metacritic and see this. A list of Xbox developed, published or exclusive titles would have been more interesting to me.

@Kaloudz I remember finding that game very difficult.... don't recall the framerate, just my a$$ getting kicked

@Kaloudz oh man, no wonder you thought the dreamcast didn't perform well. I'm not sure about Who Wants to Beat Up a Millionaire, but it looks like the only game you played that is a solid 60 is SA2. UT is capped at 60, but it doesn't ever seem to get there. More like 20-35

@carlos82 Yeah, seems ridiculous that they can only get this game to 30fps on the new consoles

@carlos82 The 3600 is very close to the CPU equivalent(3700x) of the XSX, it's only one step below in AMD's product line. Definitely not much less capable

@Kaloudz I need to try Doom 3 on my LG CX. Would be amazing with the deep blacks, OLED response time, HDR and 60fps. I wonder what condition this game is in on consoles

@Kaloudz I'm 39. Been playing since I was probably 7-8. Had a NES and colecovision. First off, we shouldn't lump Dreamcast in with N64 for performance. DC has many 60fps games that hold decently at that. I loved Goldeneye and Perfect Dark on N64, but the low refresh rate bothered me even back then. I found 30fps intolerable when I got my first LCD TV, couldn't even play Halo on OG Xbox anymore. Went back to my high end JVC CRT and immediately noticed the deeper blacks, far improved input lag and motion clarity. The LCD was considered good and was expensive (around $1500 in 2003 if I remember correctly) I have never been completely happy with another display until I tried the CX. The awful blacks on LCD ruined horror/dark games for me, Doom 3 went from being completely engaging and terrifying to looking like a f**king joke even on the best LCD I tried. I'm so glad these OLEDS exist now

@StylesT I think that some people are more sensitive to lower FPS. 30fps makes me feel nauseous, gives me a headache and I find it very hard to see what is going on when I move the camera. I find 30fps even worse now that I have an oled

@Fenbops Cool! Nice to hear Direct Storage is finally getting implemented, hopefully this is the start of more widespread use

@Warriooh Have you played Manifold Garden? Looks like we have similar game interests and Manifold Garden was an incredible experience for me

So people love a feature that saves a few button clicks (Smart Delivery) But defend a somewhat broken feature that needs button clicks for certain games every time you play them AND can make them crash???? Smart Delivery and Quick Resume should be able to be turned off per game. Both can be annoying and shouldn't be forced on

@BAMozzy https://www.eurogamer.net/microsoft-aims-to-release-at-least-one-new-first-party-game-into-xbox-game-pass-every-quarter

The big problem seems to be leading people on and not delivering

@SplooshDmg Same here, nothing would launch on my PC and XSX wouldn't load any game I tried. Tried offline mode and nothing either. I didn't try any disc games though, I'm guessing those still worked? I was going to try my One X, but decided I had already wasted enough time. It was not cool being locked out of playing games I paid for. I don't play Gran Turismo 7, but I was still pretty put off by it losing service for a while. More understandable being it is a live service game though. This is way worse and eroded my trust in the platform

@SplooshDmg Yeah, it seems to work differently on Playstation. I lived remotely with my PS4 Pro and even PS5 for a while. Would bring them to civilization to update and download new games, never had an issue. The issue Xbox just had must have been different, my XSX is my home console and I couldn't play digital or GP games for almost 2 days

@trev666 Yeah, Prey is awesome on XSX. Probably the most transformed game in the fps boost lineup

https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/list-of-xbox-fps-boost-games-on-xbox-series-x-and-xbox-series-s

This is a good list, says if the game has One X enhancements and if it gets to keep them with FPS boost

@awp69 I also counted 22 games that drop resolution as well. Thing is there is only 43 One X enhanced games on the list, so really just over half the X enhanced games loose their higher resolution and graphic settings. That is actually quite a few

This reminds me of the statement about not being able to add Slayer or change Playlist because of the limited UI. Saying that the foundation of the live service Halo game with a new engine built just for it and we will apparently be playing for the next 10 years... isn't as functional or seamless to update as Halo 3. That went over well

@Bdbrady Agreed. I'm an Xbox fan, but Halo Infinite was very disappointing. On top of the issues you mentioned there is also the broken VRR, crap Dolby Vision implementation, no coop, garbage 30hz servers and in some ways has an inferior graphic presentation than previous Halo games. Also they call it a gaas, but don't seem to be doing very well on the service part besides fixing broke stuff from launch. I paid full price as I have been a Halo fan since it released, this is the first time I have regrets about buying a Halo game

@Banjo- yes, there should be no frametime spikes that judder the image or introduce screen tearing

@CutchuSlow I have this issue once in a while as well. Also get dropped inputs here and there. I quit playing Hollow Knight on that platform because of it actually, was infuriating. Maybe it could be related to clock issues.... I have some research to do

Yes, the display can adapt a variety of refresh rates, so the judder felt at anything other than native refresh (or a number divisible by it) are essentially gone. Game speed or framerate does not change due to VRR.

It's nice to have, but it's not magic. If you have access to a ps5 with R&C Rift Apart and a 120hz display you can get a good feel for how different framerate and refresh rates effect game presentation and input lag. The game can do 30fps, 40fps with a 120hz display, 60fps and a 60fps with lower input lag on 120hz display. It's interesting to see and feel differences.

Or if you have a good PC you play around with different refresh rates of course.

@Banjo- Sadly there dosen't seem to be a reliable way to find out besides digging around forums and trying yourself.

Not a big deal for Halo Infinite in quality mode on XSX, but 120fps mode is pretty much trash for anyone sensitive to unstable framerate.

Also remember VRR dosen't make lower framerate "feel" like 60. Going between 55-60 isn't very noticeable in gameplay, but dropping to the 40-50 range still plays like an unstable game if control input or smooth camera scrolling are important. All it does it does is fix frametime judder.

And yes Guardians is awesome! I was very surprised with how much I enjoyed it

@Banjo- I thought it was supposed to be a system level feature like GSYNC on PC, but doesn't work for some games like Halo Infinite and Dying Light 2 (think it was fixed I a patch for this game) There also used to be VRR compatible tags on games in the online store, but those are gone now.

Sony blog post about VRR seemed to imply that support will should be patched in for existing games, but that there will also be a system level setting to force it. Sounds like the implementation of forced Super Sampling on PS4 Pro.

@Banjo- Yeah, performance mode. Most 30 fps modes are fairly locked in seems

Elden Ring, Guardians of the Galaxy, CP2077, RE8 with RT and Ghostrunner with RT are games I found VRR to be noticeable

@Banjo- I'll give it a try when I get home, pretty sure I spammed the green button though. Unless c9 is different than cx

@Banjo- You are pressing the green button?