This. Though I have to say it was a nice surprise seeing Watchdogs Legion with Ray traced reflections even for a seemingly long distance from the player on such a small box.
This is very very promising for RT on the larger consoles.
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It was indeed promising to see although, as the Twitter user said, it’s a cross-gen game so we will need to see what the future holds, but it is a promising start.
Man, just came from a Facebook group of game developers who were all peddling misinformation and concerns that Series S is holding back the next generation. Some of em even thought Xbox is gonna keep supporting Xbox one for the entire generation, like where the hell have they been getting all this Lmao
I gave this as a rundown, hopefully anyone else here still having doubts can finally get some clarity on it.
So the console is strictly meant for native 1440p (although I feel 1080p will be the more popular choice). The GPU equivalent would be like a 2060, which isn’t supposed to do 4K gaming at all so you wouldn’t make 4K games try to run on a 2060 in the first place. I have a GTX 1060 card, why would I wanna run the game at 4k when the card is not meant to handle that at all?
Pushing native 4K is a significant GPU hog that’s exactly why companies like Nvidia and Microsoft are coming up with AI and ML solutions like DLSS and DirectML (which the Xbox consoles and eventually PC shall have) for upsampling lower resolutions to higher while not just increasing frame rate but also reconstructing the image to look even better.
All of this is why you see the reduced TFlops from 12 to 4 but that is exactly the purpose, to target a much lower resolution.
Outside this, it shares the same cpu as Series X only at a 0.2 GHz decrease that won’t matter as much. So that means all the AI, simulation, design related tasks shall not be bottlenecked.
Next, it has the same custom NVMe SSD, only at a smaller capacity (which is definitely a downside but that’s not a technical issue at all).
The lower capacity shall be naturally alleviated moving forward for both consoles by building your asset streaming around an SSD instead of HDDs so that asset duplication is no longer necessary for frequent data access, in turn significantly reducing file sizes.
Next, it shall have reduced RAM capacity and speed, which shall be compensated by Sampler Feedback Streaming, basically only streaming in not just fewer MIPs but also only parts of the MIPs for the textures on screen, in turn saving a lot of memory usage in realtime. The reduced speed is probably the only concern to have, and we’ll have to see how developers react to it over time after the consoles have come out and we are well into next gen.
All in all, hope that explains why it’s not holding back anything.
If you were on a pc with a 1050 ti, and a modern game was built with insane graphics, you would simply go to the settings and mess with the toggles, turn particles off, turn this or that to lower settings and you’d still experience the same game. The same thing is happening here with the gpu and that’s the only place where its happening significantly, everything else is literally the same as in the flagship console.
GPUs rarely affect game design, which is why we’ve had such extensive graphics settings options on PCs for decades now.
Hope that explains it. Cheers. 
Were they developers or artists. Because I know many of them pretend to be developers but they hardly know anything regarding the systems and have a very limited gaming history.
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Exactly. And they should stop doing off the cuff news reaction vids without making an effort to get actual info to back up what they are reporting. With these YT vids there is zero editorial control at all in the race to make some click bait YT vid offering random hot takes.
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Even artists should know better given the info on hand. It is literally just lowering texture res and changing rendering resolution.
I don’t mind the youtube personalities reacting to news but if you want to be taken seriously as a “journalist” you have to take more responsibility as far as I am concerned. Yes, it’s not as popular but your reputation as a reliable source is on the line. It’s fine if they make off the cuff statements but make damn sure people know it’s an opinion or educated guess and not a leak. Imma get off my soapbox.
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Frankly majority of them don’t care or are just unaware as they just do it as they are told.
The performance optimization is done by the software developers (the actual developers) only they have a proper knowhow of the system performance.
They let the Art Directors know where things need to be optimized and where they can push more and then it is passed on to the leads and then the artists.
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Looks like I know which console my nephews are getting this Xmas.
For a difference of $200
- 6 GB reduction in memory
- 512 GB reduction in SSD
- 32 CU die reduction in GPU
- Memory controller reduction in scale with GPU reduction
- Heat sink bulk reduction
- Simpler MOBO design
The deal for the Series S is a scam !
Lol I’m an artist myself and it was just surprising that I got away from twitter to escape all this concern trolling only to find the same on an actual game developer group, it shouldn’t be the case that I was more informed than these actual developers but there I was.
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Yeah, it’s everywhere. I’m pretty sure Microsoft is more heavily criticized than Google or Amazon at this point, even though they are doing everything they could to be seen as benevolent or pro-consumers.
If launching a next gen console at 299€, which is a dream come true for many people that struggle during a global pandemic, is still scrutinized and criticized, I don’t know what could convince these guys. Nothing probably.
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LOL. It’s actually a lot common than we think.
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They are lucky to have you as their uncle ! 
Are you sure there are real developpers? On the net everybody can claim to be anything. Not directed to you. But frauds are everywhere beware.
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There is apparently ‘concern’ that XSS won’t be able to run X1X enhanced version of games via BC due to having 8 GB of usable RAM instead of 9 GB in the X1X. Wanted to note that very few games use the ma 9 GB routinely and with the SSD present ya shouldn’t need see issues with assets not in RAM getting there in time for rendering them. Not sure if that is something requiring dev input on though.
In any case, XSS is intended to be used for 1080p TV’s, not 4k TV’s. So I dunno why anyone would care if the 4k texture assets aren’t there.
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New FUD tactic. Always create a constant noise of negativity whatever MS do.
What about BC on PS5? Lol
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It’s ridiculous. If you really care about 4K then buy the Series X. It’s literally that simple.
The Series S is for gamers who just want to play games. Think of a 10 year old kid, do you honestly think he/she cares whether a game is running in 4K or not? No.
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One example. My high school kid who worked over the summer and was hoping to buy his own console with his own money on release. He has almost enough for the XSS but forgot tax. For anti-altruism purposes I am trying to push this “unknown X1X enhancement” narrative and had him look up super sampling and asked “what about taking the Series model on a trip or using a 4k monitor?” (Shhhh. I’m hoping to surprise him with the XSX for the holiday.)
It’s an odd and likely super rare instance, but some innocent ignorance may bite a consumer in the butt if they are also planning on a future 4k set as they continue to drop in price. They see the BC capability and a 4k output.
I’ll counter my own argument rendering this entire post null. 
That ignorance from the customer would likely place them in the I-don’t-know-the-difference-so-I-don’t-care group. And…the MS BC team may have a way to still enhance and uprez without using the One X enhancements.
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