"There are features that ship on X today that do not ship on S, even from our own games, like ray-tracing that works on X, it's not on S in certain games. So for an S customer, they spent roughly half what the X customer bought, they understand that it's not going to run the same way," [Phil] said.

Doesn't this contradict Microsoft's policy? I thought they required games on the Xbox platform to have parity across the S and X. Aside from things like resolution and raytracing, actual game features missing from the S version seems like opening the door for other developers to cut whole game features for the S version as well.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

It does go against what we've been told is their policy. At this point though if the entry level console is holding back the main console from getting games they may not have a choice but to change that policy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm curious to know why they couldn't get the co-op to work on the Series S, since it exceeds the minimum requirements for the PC version, and I would assume there's less random background stuff running on the console to use up the resources in the first place.

[–] gravitas_deficiency 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From what I’ve read, split-screen more or less necessitates running two game clients simultaneously, and while the X can handle it, the S simply doesn’t have enough juice to do it smoothly at reasonable quality.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But a PC with the same specs as the Series S allegedly can run split screen. So either the minimum specs for the PC are a lie, or there's something wrong with the Xbox's software or architecture.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The minimum specs are not the same. On PC it requires 8GB RAM and a GPU with 4GB. XSS has 10GB unified memory, so that's still 2GB less than the min PC spec. Also, both consoles reserve 2GB for the OS. On PC there will be some RAM used by the OS, but large parts of it can be swapped out when not actually used. The reserved RAM on Xbox is always reserved.

The truth is the the Xbox Series S was a mistake. It's typical short-term thinking.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Isn't the mistake the policy and not the console itself? Barring split screen not many gameplay features require immense power, and with this the precedent is set for that. Entry level consoles have their own spot, and as long as devs can scale down or cut some heavy features, it shouldn't be a problem.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

. Entry level consoles have their own spot, and as long as devs can scale down or cut some heavy features, it shouldn’t be a problem.

That will be possible at the start of this generation, with a lot of cross-gen games. Later on in the gen when developers start pushing the hardware to its limits it's going to be a problem.

Like I said: short term thinking. I think Sony made the better bet here with both versions of the console having identical performance and the cheaper version just getting rid of the archaic optical drive.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Console hardware by definition would get obsolete towards the end of their lifecycle.

Heck, even current gen games are falling down to 720p on PS5 and Series X (FF16, Jedi Survivor, Immortals of Aveum). Wouldn't that make Series X and PS5 mistakes too, given how poorly they're performing? Or is it that it's premature to write off anything when devs themselves are figuring out how to make games work well in the current gen?

Last gen was much more weak yet we found devs using the fixed platform to deliver games like God of War Ragnarok, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Ghost of Tsushima, The Last of Us Part 2, Gran Turismo 7. This tells us that netbook like consoles were able to still last a full generation and have great looking games, while competent current gen consoles are already struggling to maintain 1080p60. So maybe it's less about hardware and more about how the devs adapt to the constraints of a console, and right now they're overshooting their capabilities.

When last gen launched, people already called the hardware obsolete and weak. They were mistakes just like you're calling Series S one. However cross gen games are still coming out for them.

Series S in comparison is a lot of hardware for sub $300. So far we've seen the memory being a major bottleneck, CPU, GPU and SSD wise games are able to scale down.

I mean it can run Flight Simulator 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 at 60fps, Metro Exodus with several RT features at 60 FPS (albeit at 514p native res upscaled to 1080p ish). I wouldn't really call it a mistake if it's close to Nintendo Switch's price point. Sure there will be games that will demand more from the consoles, but the overlap of people really really wanting Baldur's Gate 3's splitscreen but on a sub $300 console is gonna be extremely small. Maybe the fate of this console would be that it is a failure for Split Screen/games with multiple scenes rendered at one time, but that's a niche IMO.

Given enough time and resources, if needed, Larian could very well bring split screen to Series S and optimize their engine further to handle act 3 better on lower end PCs.

Edit: I'm not saying there's nothing wrong and we should be foolishly optimistic. I'm saying that the mistake isn't the console hardware as much as the policies that MSFT might have kept and the amount of memory the OS takes on Series S. If relaxing on parity of split screen takes care of 99.99% of games, I guess that's alright. If and when we see every major game, first and third party, failing to be decent looking at 30fps, then yeah, I would agree that the console is so poorly balanced that it's impossible for devs to make games that are on PS5 and Series S.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s not archaic, more so for the Xbox version. You can use it as a Blu-ray player and to play old Xbox games

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

So, you can use it to play outdated media. Isn't that the definition of archaic?

Why not add a compact casette player so you can play your Commodore 64 games on it as well?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I've been wondering the same thing. Doubt we'll ever get an answer unelss Digital Foundry deep dives it.