Due to its significantly weaker hardware, the Xbox Series S is apparently a thorn in the side of developers, with some wishing the console never existed in the first place.
2VIEW GALLERY – 2 IMAGES
The Xbox Series S was created with two goals in mind: 1) to boost the Xbox hardware footprint with a low-cost $199 option, and 2) to lock players into a digital-only ecosystem of software and services where Microsoft makes all of its gaming profit. It’s unknown if this gambit has paid off insofar as global availability, but it has led to a new 1TB $349 Xbox Series S and a digital-only Xbox Series X, and analysts estimate that the Series S makes up a sizable portion of total Gen 9 Xbox sales.
But the Series S has led to issues with game optimization. We’ve seen some developers speak out on the Series S’ weaker hardware, including Remedy, who launched Control on Series X/S. Remember that the Series S’ GPU is 61% weaker than the Series X, with nearly 40% less RAM. This reduction in power and memory has apparently caused headaches for developers, with one Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League artist, Del Walker, speaking quite openly about his experiences with the Xbox Series S.
“I wish the Series S never existed, man. So annoying to optimize for that console – I expect we’ll unfortunately see more game launches get skipped by Xbox in the future,” Walker said on Twitter.
“No need to get triggered by my personal experience – I just DO NOT like having to optimize current gen games for that console and I wish it never existed. Xbox Series X is an amazing piece of hardware though; fantastic console.”
The Series S may have also held back the performance of big first-party games like Starfield at launch, which was locked to 30FPS on both Series S and Series X because of “consistency.”
Starfield has since been updated to hit 60FPS on both the Series S and Series X consoles, nearly one year after launch.