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Xbox Says Devs Should "Plan Better" To Get Games Running On Series S

Gambit2483

Member
Came here to see one snippet of a lengthy conversation taken out of context while plenty of console fanboys pounce.

I do not leave disappointed.
myqiEDp.gif
 

justiceiro

Marlboro: Other M
Man, I'm loving all this salt in this thread. I'm really grateful that Xbox looked at last gen and thought "guys, let's make at least one console for not hype blind gamers?"
 

MarkMe2525

Banned
He needs to act like herman hulst. You dont see that guy talking like him.
I don't think so, there is not anything wrong with a companies leadership speaking to media or public. I actually prefer it vs the companies that make you feel as if they are out of reach. The crux of the issue is us. We reward clickbait headlines (whether posting outside articles or creating the clickbait thread titles). When people point out the discrepancy, they get buried and the conversation keeps going on.

People should be able to speak without their words and intentions being twisted. We are 5 pages in and people are still posting under the assumption that the alleged quote is accurate. You would think that as soon as we realized that the source was inaccurate, that as a community, we would want it corrected as quickly as possible. Here, we imply it's the person's fault for making a comment
 
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DavidGzz

Gold Member
Most devs that developed for PS2 probably had no idea Xbox even existed.
4000+ games vs nearly 1000.

My point is that if they could scale games for both of those consoles, then the S is hardly a departure from a PS5 once you lower resolution. Devs can put The Witcher 3 on a Switch. If they can't make current games run on the S, they suck plain and simple.
 
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PeteBull

Member
Not a fan of Series S, but if multiplat games could run on Nintendo Switch, there are no reason it can't on Series S, just reduce frame rate to 30, resolution to sub 1080p, low res texture etc.

If you buy a budget console, expect budget experience, as simple as that
For a while u dont see any demanding multiplats on switch anymore tho, hell even ps4/xbox one versions, so crossgen games, are dying out, very likely we wont see any in 2024 already.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2...y-on-switch-has-been-delayed-to-november-2023 double delay on this one, and looks like that will be last AAA multiplat game that will come on switch, as u can see massive delay already.
 

Azurro

Banned
Holy shit, even MS said, that you did X version first and then you port down.

And that's when you run into huge performance problems later on and not how a project should be planned out.

MS said that as a PR piece, if you want something to run on a group of different hw specifications and you want it to run well on all of them, you target the lowest performing platform, make sure that whatever you design runs well there and then you just increase settings for the other ones.
 

Ar¢tos

Member
My point is that if they could scale games for both of those consoles, then the S is hardly a departure from a PS5 once you lower resolution. Devs can put The Witcher 3 on a Switch. If they can't make current games run on the S, they suck plain and simple.
Sure they can, but it's the cost and all the time and resources spent on doing the extensive optimizations to compensate for inferior ram amount and bandwidth worth it in the end, with the install base differences?
 

PeteBull

Member
Good devs can work inside hardware limitation. How about starting development on Series S and then improving that version for Series X/PS5.
That would be definition of crossgen game, where usually devs only improve on stronger platform, and by 2024 u wont see many/any of such games anymore, for simple reason, by 2024 any customer aka gamer who buys games moved on to current gen console.

Xss is much stronger from last gen consoles in terms of cpu/ssd but is roughly on pair with ps4pr0 and bit weaker from one X gpu wise, vs ps5/xsx tho it lacks ram(vram) and bandwith on top of being 1/3rd of xsx gpu wise.
Its really terrible deal to buy at 300, and even more terrible with that new 1tb version at 350, barely 50$ below ps5 digital yet so much weaker :p
 
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acm2000

Member
Really terrible deal to buy at 300, and even more terrible with that new 1tb version at 350, barely 50$ below ps5 digital yet so much weaker :p
Mute point since if someone is looking at a series s they're clearly interested in Xbox not playstation or simply taking the cheap upgrade route from last gen.
 

SeraphJan

Member
For a while u dont see any demanding multiplats on switch anymore tho, hell even ps4/xbox one versions, so crossgen games, are dying out, very likely we wont see any in 2024 already.
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2...y-on-switch-has-been-delayed-to-november-2023 double delay on this one, and looks like that will be last AAA multiplat game that will come on switch, as u can see massive delay already.
Series S CPU is significantly better than PS4 and XBox one, its more GPU bottlenecked, meaning reducing frame rate and resolution is doable. Its not like its CPU had different architecture compare to Series X, I believe its scalable. The CPU between the two machine had only 0.2GHz clock speed of difference. Lower resolution also consume less VRam, thus making 10GB of unified Ram (compare to 16GB in Series X) also scalable.

Again, I'm not a fan of Series S, however I do believe its not as "holding back games" as people claimed, the main component that will likely "holding back games" are the CPU, as GPU is easily scalable. I believe this was the design philosophy behind Series console in the first place.
 
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Three

Gold Member
Devs can put The Witcher 3 on a Switch. If they can't make current games run on the S, they suck plain and simple.
The Witcher 3 is an 8yr old game and not everything is just about lowering resolution.

Series S CPU is significantly better than PS4 and XBox one, its more GPU bottlenecked, meaning reducing frame rate and resolution is doable. Its not like its CPU had different architecture compare to Series X, I believe its scalable. The CPU between the two machine had only 0.2GHz clock speed of difference. Lower resolution also consume less VRam, thus making 10GB of unified Ram (compare to 16GB in Series X) also scalable.
The problem is that this isn't how it ended up. The amount of RAM required doesn't scale that easily.
 
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DavidGzz

Gold Member
The Witcher 3 is an 8yr old game and not everything is just about lowering resolution.

The Switch's tech is even older. And it's an open world game that runs on a tablet with 4 gigs of RAM. I think the CPU in these consoles are more of an issue than the RAM. Starfield for example, that has to run at 30fps because if it's scope. If they managed to get Flight Sim to run on the S, I'd say it has what it takes to play any upcoming game. If the devs don't find it worth it, they can skip Xbox.
 

supernova8

Banned
Saying this as a happy Series S owner, the only problem is if Playstation 5 sales continues to significantly outperform Xbox Series sales to the point that some developers simply decide that they will court Sony for an exclusivity deal (especially the ones that have no interest in being on Game Pass at launch), take a lump sum payment from SIE to make their title exclusive (indefinitely or for the foreseeable future).

The reality is that Xbox is not in a position (market share-wise) to come out with a lower-tiered spec, mandate games be on both tiered-systems, and just expect devs to go along with it and be like "Got it, boss", especially when Playstation seems happy to make exclusivity deals.
 

foamdino

Member
We will know how good an idea the series S was at the start of the next gen. If MS stick to their guns and produce another pair of machines (little brother/big brother), then that gives us an idea that the S wasn't a gigantic waste of everyone's time.

To be clear, I was on the "this is terrible, it will cause more work for devs and will guarantee that 3rd-party games never reach their potential as they will need to be developed for a lowest-common-denominator" side. But we were all told how porting was trivial (just set a compiler option - yeah ok), and that everything scales - oh wait the game uses up more ram than is physically available in the S - wot do now?

Anyone with dev experience knew these excuses were BS but...
 

Three

Gold Member
The Switch's tech is even older. And it's an open world game that runs on a tablet with 4 gigs of RAM. I think the CPU in these consoles are more of an issue than the RAM. Starfield for example, that has to run at 30fps because if it's scope. If they managed to get Flight Sim to run on the S, I'd say it has what it takes to play any upcoming game. If the devs don't find it worth it, they can skip Xbox.
The PC version of Witcher had a min RAM requirement of 6GB so it wasn't that difficult to take 4 years from an entirely different studio (Saber) to lower this for a specific platform release. The open world nature of it only means they had that low RAM requirement in mind already streaming from a HDD. It was a game that started development during PS3.
Another entire studio then had years after PS4/XBO game release to port to Switch which was a newer albeit portable SoC machine, it's not older tech. You don't get that kind of luxury with Series S development. You either release at the same time or you don't release at all. Games that are created for the XSX and PS5 requirements which aren't older targets than the XSS and where handing it out to a different studio to make or release later isn't an option, it needs to be the same game. So you either plan with XSS as your minimum spec creating assets that take XSS memory constraints into consideration and having overlap with the XSX/PS5 or you don't release on xbox.

Regarding starfield, Bethesda are just bad at optimisation. Nothing to do with number of planets lowering framerate. All their previous games have been badly optimised. They haven't even been able to offer performance patches for any of their last gen games. They capped their PC games to 60fps and even tied their physics to framerate twice. They have amazing themes for their games but their engine and optimisation is just bad. They're like the fromsoftware of the west but worse.
 
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Thirty7ven

Banned
Can’t believe anybody is even trying to defend the idea that devs have to waste their resources on making games perform on Series S when fact of the matter is that MS told the whole world devs would simply have to lower the resolution down and that’s it. Basically everything else was on Xbox dev tools to deliver.

The same people that repeated that theory for 24 months are now singing another tune? Have some consistency please.
 

DeepEnigma

Gold Member
I recall something but I can't find any information on which they lose more on. I would be surprised if it's the S though especially as they have now increased the price by $50 on the S.
You have to remember, they had the S on fire sale for well over a year. Well below MSRP in a lot of territories in attempt to gain ground and have their digital Game Pass box.
 

Three

Gold Member
You have to remember, they had the S on fire sale for well over a year. Well below MSRP in a lot of territories in attempt to gain ground and have their digital Game Pass box.
Yeah I remember those. I mean at MSRP. I don't think the loss at MSRP was higher on the S compared to the X, could be wrong though. otherwise they would have been pushing the X more than the S I'd imagine. Now whatever losses they had collectively based on sales volume, overall losses might be higher on the S vs the X but per unit I have doubts they lost more on the S.
 
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