Coming to the two-year mark since the release of the current generation of consoles, only a few titles have been released that also aren’t available on the older PS4/XB1 console generation.
That’s expected to change from this point on as plenty of major titles are set to be released that simply won’t run on the older machines. In fact, it’s the weakest of the new generation, the entry-level console Xbox Series S, that might be holding things back now.
A Twitter conversation broke out yesterday, one that has seemingly since been deleted but has been screen-captured elsewhere online. It began with veteran games journalist Jeff Gerstmann posting a tweet suggesting he doesn’t think the argument that the ‘Series S is holding back next-gen games’ holds up saying “most of these games also come to PC and already have to cover a wide variety of configurations.”
He scored a response from VFX artist Ian Maclure who previously worked on last year’s Xbox Series X/S and PC game “I Am Fish”. In a series of private tweets, he reportedly said (via PSU):
“It might sound broken, but the reason you are hearing it a lot right now is because MANY developers have been sitting in meetings for the past year desperately trying to get Series S launch requirements dropped.
Studios have been through one development cycle where Series S turned out to be an albatross around the neck of production, and now that games are firmly being developed with new consoles in mind, teams do not want to repeat the process.”
This follows on from a series of since-deleted tweets last week which related to the reveal that “Gotham Knights” wouldn’t have a 60fps ‘performance’ tier on consoles. In those tweets, Rocksteady senior character technical artist Lee Devonald claimed that trade-offs needed to be made because of Xbox Series S. Those tweets reportedly said:
“I wish gamers understood what 60fps means, in terms of all of the things they *lose* to make the game run that fast. Especially taking into account that we have a current-gen console that’s not much better than a last-gen one.”
The issue stems from the fact that multi-platform games need to “optimise for the lowest performer” and indicated that because of the Xbox Series S GPU, there is an: “an entire generation of games, hamstrung by that potato”. This is heavily due to Microsoft mandating that new games have to be released on both Xbox Series X and S. In doing so it goes beyond merely making more resolution and graphical settings available, it can impact the fundamental design structure of a game if it has to be made to work on weaker systems.
Despite the criticism and boasting only about one-third the graphical power of the Series X, Series S is estimated to have outsold the Series X in multiple key markets.
