I don’t have an S but man, it is damn impressive that this gigantic open world game can be 60fps on a 300 bucks system. Jesus.
Exactly!! That’s the point! $299 you can get 60fps or 120fps on some games
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People exaggerate the so called “lack of power” of Series S. It’s a true next gen console.
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S will hold up a lot better than most people think long term. There’s a lot of meat in there for something that only needs to run games at 1080P. It’s under-estimated how much of a resource hog resolution is.
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I do believe that Microsoft made a mistake by marketing the Series S as a 1440p/120fps console. They should have marketed the Series S as a 1080p/60fps console. This way, they would most likely always over-deliver after under-promising.
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It’s a fair point. I think most people know that the marketing covers the high end though. The One X didn’t hit 4K every time when it was much more aggressively marketed as a 4K console. My belief is that the Series S will have 1440P modes in a good number of 1st party games. I don’t see the majority of devs targeting that resolution however. It’s such a small slice of gamers who would bother to play at it. The ML upscaling is the wild card.
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I agree with everything you said. Microsoft tends to over-promise when it comes to their marketing and I believe they would be so much better off to do the opposite because this way, barring some kind of disaster, they would never lose and always come out ahead. Oh well. It all is what it is.
Looking forward to seeing how the DirectML upscaling ends up being implemented and how it comes across to us when playing the games.
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I agree but i never thought ot it as a 1440p and 120fps console so I’m happy with the Series S. I always viewed it as a 1080p machine.
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I do too but sometimes I think Microsoft gets ahead of themselves and it then bites them in the ass. In my opinion, it’s always better to under-promise and over-deliver. Plus, in case you only deliver what is promised, you can never lose. It would be all positivity because you would either get what is promised or you get more than what was promised. Both sides win.
Maybe digital foundry should wait a bit before analysing these new games? They are going to have to test again now lol.
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Great updates. If the screen tearing gets cleaned up, it’s going to be bliss. Loving this game so much!
They’ll probably like it tbh gets more vids out and ad revenue haha
I don’t know why Marketing the console as an 1440p console is critised.
Just look at how things are on PS5 and XSX.
Both are marketed as 4k. But in games like watch dogs they are 1440p lower bound most of the time. At 30 fps none the less.
We already have many games which are doing 1440p 60 on the console with some games going upto 1800p as well and many games which are not targeting it. It’s upto devs afterall.
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All true. I simply believe that giving consumers lower expectations and then over delivering or at least giving what is advertised is a no lose situation.
Now i see where you are coming from.
But i believe in this scenario, the under promised marketing would have been beneficial only if the console(series S) was targeted towards hardcore gamers.
But series S is targeted towards casual consumers, so big words of marketing works here. Marketing is on the point i believe here.
Perhaps but I disagree. If a casual consumer buys a Series S and it’s marketed as 1440p with up to 120fps but some games don’t hit that, that consumer will be disappointed but if you say it’s 1080p at 60fps, I believe that consumer and in general, majority would be extremely happy because chances are, they’re playing on a 1080p HDTV at 60hz.
If Series S was marketed at the hardcore gamers at 1080p/60fps, there would be no reason for those hardcore fans to buy the console. Series S is for the casuals. It would never be marketed towars the hardcore and if it was, then it should be 1440p/120fps.
Hardcore equals marketing at 1440p/120fps. Casual equals marketing at 1080p/60fps.
Since Series S is for the casuals, I think they should have went lower instead of higher because casuals aren’t going to care about 120fps or 1440p. The TV is probably the number one reason why I would have marketed it as 1080p/60fps because that’s what the vast majority will be using if they’re buying a Series S. So if that consumer is getting 1080p/60fps consistently or better, that consumer will be happy and satisfied with their purchase.
Company wins. Brand wins. Consumer wins. More importantly, neither side loses.
The people buying the Series S won’t even know what 1440p is or what fps is imo, well they’ll probably know what 1080p is and think of 1440p is higher so it’s better but that’s about it they wouldn’t noticed the actual difference in games running at 1080p v 1440p.
1440p vs 1080 is definitely not as noticeable but 60fps is definitely noticeable. It’s not just about watching a 30fps vs 60fps video on YouTube and not being able to tell the difference, 60fps feels a lot more smoother than 30 when actually playing the game, and it’s inherently more responsive especially in action heavy fast twitch based games so even if the player feels like yeah it’s not making much difference they’re still actually being better at the game inherently due to more smoothness and lesser input lag playing at 60 than at 30.
Games like RDR2 or Flight Sim or any of the myriad turn based games can get away with 30 cuz of how sluggish they are by design, but the vast majority of action adventure rpg etc games are best played at 60. 120 however is pretty much a novelty and should largely be explored post launch (like in Ori’s case) or in online multiplayer games. At least the option needs to exist for 60. So I’m glad they added fps mode for Valhalla on SS. I’m even more glad it’s becoming a thing for both platforms, especially for Sony who were so stubborn about staying with “filmic” 30fps. I’d take a resolution hit over framerate every single day.
To us gamers that know what frame per second is yes, of course it’s noticeable like i have already said we are not the target audience for this device. The people who are buying the Series S will most likely play in non game mode anyway which adds so much input lag and they wouldn’t even notice that so they won’t notice 30 > 60 or 1080p > 1440p.