If Xbox Series S is successful, why would developers bother with Xbox Series X?

[10k]

Devs build their games with the highest quality assets and then downscale them to lesser hardware if need be. XSS and XSX share the same architecture and everything, the S just has specs that cater to 1440p60.

There’s always going to be a market for high end consoles and PC’s.

[Staffy]

@OneBadMutha

Anything they do with the Series X will be done with the Series S. If Series X leverages VRS, so will Series S. If Series X uses upscaling, so will Series S. They have the same RDNA2 feature sets. So it’s not like Series X will be outputting upscaled or checkerboarded images leveraging VRS while Series S has to produce those images with less efficiency natively. I don’t see Series X hitting images less than checkerboarded or upscaled 4K. It would be just as jarring to the Series X enthusiast on a high quality 4K TV as 720/900P would be to Series S owners…which is still a possibility if devs decided to forgo resolution for other things. I just don’t think they ever would due to the impact it would have to sales.

One thing is for sure man, MS really made a well thought out decision here and I definitely can see XSS becoming a big success.

[pg2g]

@anonymous

…Discounting the rest … At $200 less it has a paltry 512GB drive, less RAM, smaller APU, etc - this is known … It’s not much of a value except for casual gamers that only play Fortnite or an EA game once in awhile, that won’t need additional space. Adding an SSD expansion will bring you close to the X price range. Maybe even the exact same cost. I learned last time not to buy the cheap option - you get what you pay for. It’s the same with all consoles, not just MS. The Switch Lite, for example, is a PoS. The PS4 has held up, but still has problems with the newer PS4 games, and don’t get me started on the 1S - useless for the last two years except as a blu ray player. It makes business sense, but it will absolutely be the lowest denominator across both MS and Sony.

I was considering going PC so having something like this in the living room for more social stuff would be nice. Would also be a good secondary console for people who want to play some xbox games but primary console is Switch or PS.

[BadMoodJones (Prem K. Singh)]

@zedox

Please flag posts instead of talking about that stuff in the open, we can handle things and let the topic of the thread continue without the nonsense derailing threads. Thanks .

ooh how did you make your comment green?

[zedox]

@BadMoodJones

ooh how did you make your comment green?

I am a moderator. I have privileges.

[DokkaebiGOSU]

@10k

Devs build their games with the highest quality assets and then downscale them to lesser hardware if need be. XSS and XSX share the same architecture and everything, the S just has specs that cater to 1440p60.

There’s always going to be a market for high end consoles and PC’s.

you mean the S just has specs that cater to 1440p120

[BadMoodJones (Prem K. Singh)]

@zedox

I am a moderator. I have privileges.

damnit. should’ve known. never liked colors anyway

[zedox]

@BadMoodJones

damnit. should’ve known. never liked colors anyway

jelly.

[gremlinzzzz]

@Stathis

If this thing is around 250-300 dollars/euros and takes off, what does this mean for XSX? Basically, if the “lowest common denominator” sells better, there is no incentive for developers to focus on XSX. Remember what happened with Xbox One X? After its first year almost nobody bothered to really optimise their games for it.

This is one of the reasons XSS should not exist. Microsoft should just take the hit and make XSX 400 dollars/euros. It will be a huge shame if this marvel of a console is not used to take games to the next level.

Btw, hello everyone, nice to be here!

They will bother with it because they are developing games for the PS5 too. Plus developers always want to put out a great product visually, and there is not better place to achieve that on console than the Series X.

[cinste (Pete)]

@anonymous

…Discounting the rest … At $200 less it has a paltry 512GB drive, less RAM, smaller APU, etc - this is known … It’s not much of a value except for casual gamers that only play Fortnite or an EA game once in awhile, that won’t need additional space. Adding an SSD expansion will bring you close to the X price range. Maybe even the exact same cost. I learned last time not to buy the cheap option - you get what you pay for. It’s the same with all consoles, not just MS. The Switch Lite, for example, is a PoS. The PS4 has held up, but still has problems with the newer PS4 games, and don’t get me started on the 1S - useless for the last two years except as a blu ray player. It makes business sense, but it will absolutely be the lowest denominator across both MS and Sony.

Seems like a very reductionist point you are making as it sounds like you want top end performance for low end price so it won’t offer any value to you.

So clearly the XSS isn’t aimed at your demographic (want a top end xbox but don’t value it enough to pay the asking price) it’s aimed at the countless people who want an entry point to next gen but can’t afford to be in at the top end and no this isn’t people being cheap it’s kids, low income families, people with other commitments etc.

I’d value them having an in far above some nebulous concern that XSS will limit the potential of XSX.

[CallMeCraig]

@anonymous

For one reason, the S appears to have no hardware ray tracing capability. It says “Direct X ray tracing”. It’s a severely castrated Xbox from a performance perspective. IE it is for the cheap gaming crowd.

Jason Ronald just confirmed that the Series S also has hardware accelerated ray tracing. Thats cool, isn’t it?

[LucasTaves]

@anonymous

For one reason, the S appears to have no hardware ray tracing capability. It says “Direct X ray tracing”. It’s a severely castrated Xbox from a performance perspective. IE it is for the cheap gaming crowd.

This is now confirmed false. SS has the same rt cores as SX. The difference will likely be just on the target RT resolution too (which is decoupled from the game output resolution)

[Staffy]

@LucasTaves

This is now confirmed false. SS has the same rt cores as SX. The difference will likely be just on the target RT resolution too (which is decoupled from the game output resolution)

Sounds like MS knew what they were doing and making sure porting games over should be smooth sailing. Should mean that us XSX buyers won’t have anything to be concerned about, which makes me very happy.

[LucasTaves]

@Staffy

Sounds like MS knew what they were doing and making sure porting games over should be smooth sailing. Should mean that us XSX buyers won’t have anything to be concerned about, which makes me very happy.

Yeah they designed the consoles together so the resolution is the only thing that needs to be scaled.

This is different than Xbone to X where Xbone was underpowered for the performance target and they had to give a huge boost (almost 5x the tflops for a 4x resolution increase). They are at 3x less flops target resolutions from 2.25-4 times lower.

[headspawn]

@anonymous

I have some friends from my time at MS that are NOT part of Xbox. I’m not claiming to be an insider of any sort, so no confusion. And I hate the DE of both consoles

Welp, here you go, confirmed hardware accelerated DirectX Ray Tracing:

- YouTube

Not sure why people would have told you different.

[Psycho_Lurantis]

For the same reason they bothered with PS4 Pro and Xbox One X.