Is the Xbox Series S a "potato" console holding next gen game dev back?

[monkeydog]

Putting the silly Gotham Knights story aside, there's comments from very good developers that give at least some insight into the S. I'm not going to link them because I cba, so to paraphrase badly...

 

• An ID Software dev stating that not everything scales with resolution and that S's memory is going to be a potential challenge (Possibly deleted post-acquisition)
• The Coalition detailed discoveries from developing their UE5 testbed.  Series S memory was a challenge.  Also, UE5 upscales from 1080p for performance even on XSX.  Upscaling from lower res on S can create issues that needed careful consideration
• A Remedy developer stated that maybe without the S they'd pursue different graphics options for their engine, but since it does exist, they will pursue research that works on that also, so who knows

 

Guess we'll see how well the S does when we actually see games that are built on UE5 and next version Frostbite, Anvil etc.  For talented & well funded devs like The Coalition it doesn't seem like it's going to 'hold them back'.

 

Anyway, love the S, even it looks like a box of tissues sat under the telly.   

[Stanley]

MS are on fire right now IMO. You want the highest end then they have Series X and PC, you want affordability, Series S, streaming - they got that too, and it all works seamlessly. Honestly we have never had it so good. 

[Broker]

It’s not like games have used the power available to them to meaningfully advance anything outside of graphics for the last few generations anyway. There’s rarely AAA games coming out that wouldn’t be possible whilst looking a bit worse on a 360. Open world games stopped getting bigger, FPS games stopped having more advanced physics and AI. The biggest games like GTA and COD are identical gameplay wise to what they’ve been doing for years, all the improvements are in how pretty it looks. 

[JPL]

12 minutes ago, Broker said:

Open world games stopped getting bigger

You should go and play Elden Ring!

[MattyP]

10 minutes ago, Broker said:

It’s not like games have used the power available to them to meaningfully advance anything outside of graphics for the last few generations anyway. There’s rarely AAA games coming out that wouldn’t be possible whilst looking a bit worse on a 360. Open world games stopped getting bigger, FPS games stopped having more advanced physics and AI. The biggest games like GTA and COD are identical gameplay wise to what they’ve been doing for years, all the improvements are in how pretty it looks. 

Agree.... Recently went back to the 360 and started playing some games on that which I had in my digital backlog and when playing I didn't really notice the graphics so much after a bit and was just enjoying playing the games.

 

It was this experience that kind of sent me down the Series S route really as it does have all features of the this gen (loading speeds, quick resume etc) without paying too much of a premium for them. 

 

I guess I've become a bit of a casual gamer in essence because I don't really care too much about the shinies anymore. Frame rate perhaps more so although S seems to handle 60fp@1080p. See how it pans out. Certainly not missing owning either a Series X or PS5 at the moment.

[Darwock]

I haven’t read everyone’s posts so apologies if this point has been made but I always had to look at the back of my spectrum game boxes and see ridiculously flashy screenshots from other systems. Nobody told the 16 bit computer developers they had to make their version look like a 48k, did they.

 

Surely the market can handle a few different specs of machines, it’s always had to do so.

 

edit - besides, what about the switch.

[Broker]

58 minutes ago, JPL said:

You should go and play Elden Ring!

As far as I’m aware, ER is about the size of GTAV, which came out on PS360. 

[bear]

Do open world games need to get bigger? 

 

I played through Horizon Zero Dawn earlier this year and the world felt plenty big enough. If anything it felt a bit too big as so much of it was practically empty. 

 

I don't think the worlds need to get bigger but I'd like to see what's there get more interesting or react to what you're doing. Stuff like the Nemesis system or BotWs physicsy doddaddery. 

 

 

 

Back on topic, until someone major comes out and says that the Series S is holding things back then it's hard to take these complaints too seriously. 

 

[JPL]

1 hour ago, Broker said:

As far as I’m aware, ER is about the size of GTAV, which came out on PS360. 

I wasn't being entirely serious, but that's a bit of an eye-opener if true. Maybe it's the density of things to do in Elden Ring that make it feel endless.

[Pob]

16 minutes ago, JPL said:

I wasn't being entirely serious, but that's a bit of an eye-opener if true. Maybe it's the density of things to do in Elden Ring that make it feel endless.

 

I haven't played it much, but I assume you can't fly around Elden Ring in a jet fighter.

[JPL]

16 minutes ago, Pob said:

 

I haven't played it much, but I assume you can't fly around Elden Ring in a jet fighter.

No you can’t. Not sure what your point is though. Texture streaming or something?

[Stanley]

Texture and geometry streaming have definitely improved, the speed at which you can move around Spider-Man is very impressive. Obviously that was last gen, but the open world that still impresses me the most is BOTW, on Switch, especially when you consider all the physics and chemistry stuff going on.

 

The one game I’ve played this gen that I thought couldn’t have been made before now is Returnal. That just wouldn’t have worked on PS4 or Xbox One. Actually add Flight Sim to that list, those two games are the most impressive thing I’ve seen so far this gen. I bet Returnal could run on Series S although they’d have to lower the resolution, and I think it’s only 1080p on PS5, could be wrong there mind. 

[ChristopherBloodAxe]

Does the series S have the same cpu as the X? Maybe the real issue is that games will have to be designed to be feasible when bounded by a lesser cpu.

[Mogster]

On 21/10/2022 at 15:23, Mallet said:

How is it that PC games can be played on every thing from a 1060 to a 4080, from 4 core to 12 core cpus. Played at all sorts of resolutions, graphical settings and frame rates but having 2 consoles is too much and is holding back progress? 

Indeed. PC games always come with minimum and recommended specs, and these days often list a whole range of requirements depending on what resolution and framerate you're after, along with additional requirements for raytracing. More power will give you more performance, obviously, but that doesn't mean less powerful PCs are holding back the top end hardware.

 

So no, I don't think the Series S is holding anything back. Later down the line, we'll no doubt see new mid-generation consoles get announced, and I wouldn't view the existing PS5 and Series X as holding those back either.

[Strafe]

I can see how it holds it back in a couple of ways, to an extent.

 

1) If you make a multi format game (and I’m talking current gen only I guess), you have to spend more time making the game scalable then you have to spend time and resources on making it play on the lower spec platform. I would think that, in theory at least, not having to bother with a series S build would mean you have more time and resources to build a ‘better’ game.

 

2) Any Xbox Series X exclusive still has to run on a Series S. In practice I’m sure this doesn’t extend much past lower resolution and frame rates but I reckon if you tasked a developer with a Series X only exclusive they could probably make something that wasn’t possible on a Series S.

 

That most of these games come out on PC at the same time and they have to account for lower spec machines pours cold water on that idea somewhat but still. As I understand it the series X is the more advanced machine but I haven’t seen anything on it that reaches the heights of the PS5 exclusives in visual parity and I would have to assume that dedicating all your resources to just one machine yields benefits. YMMV on this of course, that’s just my view.
 

I sometimes wonder what level fortnite could reach if they didn’t have the switch version to worry about. You could see a point where they punt that one off into cloud only (I mean they won’t I expect but I’m sure it’s come up).

 

TL;DR I reckon the Series S probably holds things back, same as a lower spec PC or Nintendo potato does. The developers likely don’t mind because cheaper machines mean more users and sales, which benefit us all.

 

 

 

 

[MK-1601]

I don't think the situation with the Series S is anywhere near as bad as some previous console generations. Case in point being the PS1, which was a really brutally underpowered machine by the end of it's life but hung around for 7+ years with a monopoly share of the market.

 

I was sceptical about the S when it was announced (remembering what a shit show the previous two base model Xboxes were), and still wouldn't buy one personally, but have to concede that MS played a blinder in successfully betting that games stick around for much much longer now and there isn't the same rush to drop everything and move to a shiny new generation.

 

Engines are much more scalable now, and the S does at least have fast storage. As long as you're not expecting miracles (4K 60fps) it's about as much of a millstone as the base consoles were last gen. It is still limited in ways beyond raw pixel pushing though - it has less overall memory than the Xbox One X for example.

 

Sucks a bit for Series X owners if they are expecting first party games that eke out every last drop of power, but MS have been beating the Game Pass, crossgen, hardware-power-not-being-important these days drum for a while now so they knew what they were getting into.

 

That said I would very much welcome Microsoft dropping the requirement for devs making series X games to also support it, the sooner the better. MS did eventually drop the (insane) requirement for all games to support the HDD-less model before the end of the PS3/360 gen, so there is some glimmer of hope I guess.

 

Having to support old hardware for 5,6,7,10 years after release (while still trying to innovate) isn't sustainable in the modern era really. Those thousands of people in the credits of Sony first party games are probably not enjoying the employee protections the US/UK teams get.

 

...

No developer making new, big budget current gen console games is going to seriously worry about supporting the Steam Deck, sorry. It's comfortably in the same niche as Game Pass, a convenient way to play old / low spec games. A few 'full fat' games from the last gen got back ported to Switch because the user base is enormous.

 

...

"It’s not like games have used the power available to them to meaningfully advance anything outside of graphics for the last few generations anyway."

Mmm, a perfectly insane, early RLLMUK vintage take. The bouquet suggests a 2006? 2007?

[mushashi]

6 hours ago, Darwock said:

I haven’t read everyone’s posts so apologies if this point has been made but I always had to look at the back of my spectrum game boxes and see ridiculously flashy screenshots from other systems. Nobody told the 16 bit computer developers they had to make their version look like a 48k, did they.

 

Surely the market can handle a few different specs of machines, it’s always had to do so.

 

edit - besides, what about the switch.

 

Well in the case of the two Xbox Series machines, developers are forced to support both, whether they want to or not, you can't release XSX only versions, much like you couldn't do PS4P/X1X games last gen so they ended up usually being higher resolution versions of the base PS4/X1 version.

 

And in the dim and distant past, games were so stupidly cheap to make, you got separate developers to do ports to individual platforms, sometimes with very little in the way of asset sharing, which isn't what you find with modern games, where they build one base version and just adapt that to each release platform and if somebody thinks there is money in doing a port to Nintendo, some poor sod gets to do a bespoke dumbed down version specifically for that platform as you can't just push the port-to button in that case.

[Mogster]

17 minutes ago, Strafe said:

That most of these games come out on PC at the same time and they have to account for lower spec machines pours cold water on that idea somewhat but still.

This has also been the case for a long time now, certainly a lot longer than multiple specced consoles have been a thing. Almost all multiformat games will have PC versions, and those have never had a single, static build to target.

 

I guess things are a little different when it comes to exclusives, but in Microsoft's case their games still usually come with simultaneous PC releases, and even Sony are making increasing moves in that direction.

[Mallet]

Regarding the lower memory on the Series S.

 

Once again I'm coming at this from a PC game's view point but if you want to play at 4k with ultra textures along with all the graphical bells and whistles you need more vram than someone using medium settings at 1080p. 

 

I know consoles have unified memory shared between cpu and gpu but surely something similar happens. 4k textures with all the effects will require more memory than more modest graphics used on Series S? 

[JPL]

1 hour ago, ChristopherBloodAxe said:

Does the series S have the same cpu as the X? Maybe the real issue is that games will have to be designed to be feasible when bounded by a lesser cpu.

It’s the same Zen 2 CPU, but with a slower clock speed and less RAM, but I think the idea was that’d be offset by the S only pushing a maximum of 1440p vs the X doing 4K.

[Stanley]

1 hour ago, MK-1601 said:

II was sceptical about the S when it was announced (remembering what a shit show the previous two base model Xboxes were), and still wouldn't buy one personally, but have to concede that MS played a blinder in successfully betting that games stick around for much much longer now and there isn't the same rush to drop everything and move to a shiny new generation.

The base model Xbox 360, also known as the Xbox 360? 

[Stanley]

1 hour ago, Strafe said:

TL;DR I reckon the Series S probably holds things back, same as a lower spec PC or Nintendo potato does. The developers likely don’t mind because cheaper machines mean more users and sales, which benefit us all.

 

 

 

 

See this I don’t agree with, how is Breath of The Wild held back, or Mario Odyssey, etc? The only thing holding developers back is their own imagination, oh, and investors. 

[Mallet]

Yeah, people say cross gen is holding us back but we have gotten two current gen only releases recently and neither can give us a 60fps mode.

 

If the only way we can continue to get 60fps games is to be held back by the Series S or cross gen then I am all for being held back. Hell, one of my favourite games in years is Vampire Survivors and look at how that game looks.

[TehStu]

Getting caught up in it being lower spec without acknowledging it's pushing a quarter of the pixels.

 

Edit-time will answer this one, no need to guess. If the X is really being held back, surely well optimized PS5 games will be more visually impressive than similar exclusives on X|S?

 

Also, there's an implication that unless you knocked down the resolution on the X and PS5 to 1080p,that there's visuals both could do at 4k at 30 FPS that the S can't at 1080 at 30 FPS. That's ultimately what we're saying, right? Again, if that's true, games fully PS5 exclusive will pull ahead in fidelity.

[monkeydog]

2 hours ago, ChristopherBloodAxe said:

Does the series S have the same cpu as the X? Maybe the real issue is that games will have to be designed to be feasible when bounded by a lesser cpu.

 

No. The Series S has the same CPU as the Series X. It does run a tiny bit slower, but not to a degree that would cause issues vs it's bigger brother or PS5. 

 

The One X has the same terrible CPU as the base One, with an overpowered GPU and fast RAM slapped on.  Its why the One X can do 4k30 versions of One S games but would mostly struggle to do 1080p60 versions like the Series S can.

 

The Series S doesn't have as much RAM as the OneX. It has less memory bandwidth too.  It's why can't run OneX versions of games, even though it's GPU is in the same ballpark.

[Strafe]

31 minutes ago, Stanley said:

See this I don’t agree with, how is Breath of The Wild held back, or Mario Odyssey, etc? The only thing holding developers back is their own imagination, oh, and investors. 

Mario Odyssey gets a bit fuzzy at times with a lot of pop in but regardless, both games were both made for a single point of hardware (well I guess zelda was Wii U but anyway).

 

There are plenty of examples of Nintendo’s ambition being stifled by technology (they wanted Yoshi in SMB3 but couldn’t do it) so I would not be surprised if there were some ideas they weren’t able to do in BOTW due to technical constraints. Nintendo must have a metaphorical Raiders of the Lost Ark style warehouse of ideas saved up for when tech catches up.
 

The idea that game developers are only constrained by their imagination - a kind but blissfully naive statement on par with being told at primary school that every kid is equal provide they work hard enough -  is clearly not true, as evidenced by Nintendo’s own statements and the obvious, countless examples of how far games have advanced in function over time. 

 

Anyway, you’re conflating my point. From a technical perspective you’re going to be restrained by the lowest spec hardware you have to be able to run it on. For example: The Eurogamer preview of God of War Ragnarok talks about the return of squeezing through small gaps slowly to hide loading screens so the game can load the next bits. You wouldn’t have the same constraints on a PS5 and Sony aren’t going to have a PS5 God of War 2 with different maps. 

 

That’s a memory speed issue - something the series S isn’t going to have the same kind of issues with but as someone posted earlier, the series S presents limitations which need to be factored in with the design and that affects the Series X. 

[Stanley]

Yeah whatever, developers are held back by any hardware than isn’t the latest Nvidia GTX 4090, using your own argument.

 

Mario gets a bit fuzzy at times 

[TehStu]

4 minutes ago, Strafe said:

but as someone posted earlier, the series S presents limitations which need to be factored in with the design and that affects the Series X. 

How?

[TehStu]

I think we don't understand what the Series S is, honestly. Unless Microsoft genuinely fluffed the "same fidelity but at a lower resolution" scaling of hardware.

[Strafe]

15 minutes ago, TehStu said:

I think we don't understand what the Series S is, honestly. Unless Microsoft genuinely fluffed the "same fidelity but at a lower resolution" scaling of hardware.

 

 

9 hours ago, monkeydog said:

Putting the silly Gotham Knights story aside, there's comments from very good developers that give at least some insight into the S. I'm not going to link them because I cba, so to paraphrase badly...

 

• An ID Software dev stating that not everything scales with resolution and that S's memory is going to be a potential challenge (Possibly deleted post-acquisition)
• The Coalition detailed discoveries from developing their UE5 testbed.  Series S memory was a challenge.  Also, UE5 upscales from 1080p for performance even on XSX.  Upscaling from lower res on S can create issues that needed careful consideration
• A Remedy developer stated that maybe without the S they'd pursue different graphics options for their engine, but since it does exist, they will pursue research that works on that also, so who knows

 

Guess we'll see how well the S does when we actually see games that are built on UE5 and next version Frostbite, Anvil etc.  For talented & well funded devs like The Coalition it doesn't seem like it's going to 'hold them back'.

 

Anyway, love the S, even it looks like a box of tissues sat under the telly.