The Xbox Series S only officially materialized last month, after well over a year of rumors that the Xbox Series X would have a smaller, cheaper, and far less powerful sibling codenamed ‘Lockhart’.
That turned out to be actually the case. When the official specs rolled in, we learned that the main difference with the Xbox Series S can be found in the GPU, which only features about 4 TFLOPS of computing power compared to the Series X’s 12 TFLOPS. But that’s not a huge issue, since it is targeting 1440p resolution (though some games are actually going to be running at 1080p) instead of UltraHD. The CPU, however, has lower clocks (about 200 MHz) as well, and most critically, there’s only 10GB of RAM instead of the Series X’s 16GB.
This led some developers to criticize Microsoft’s move with the Xbox Series S. Id Software’s Lead Engine Programmer Billy Khan, for instance, said the RAM shortcomings could be particularly difficult to compensate.
We recently interviewed David Cage, founder and CEO of Quantic Dream, and he didn’t seem too happy about the existence of the Xbox Series S either as you can read in the quote below.
Many developers prefer consoles to PC because on consoles you only have to deal with one hardware, whereas on PC there are so many configurations, graphic cards, drivers, controllers etc. that makes the development much more complex.
When a manufacturer offers two consoles with different specs, there is a strong chance that most developers will focus on the lower-end version to avoid doing two different versions. I must confess that I am really not a big fan of this situation. I think it is confusing for developers, but also for players, and although I can understand the commercial reasons behind this choice (a difference of €200 on the street price) I think the situation is questionable.
Regarding Quantic Dream, as we develop our own technology and engines, we are determined to optimize our titles for each platform. Being now a PC developer, we are implementing scalable features based on the platform, which is very helpful to highlight what the hardware has best to offer.
Do you agree with him? Are you nonetheless interested in purchasing an Xbox Series S? Let us know in the comments and stay tuned for our full interview with David Cage, which will feature many more interesting topics.