Developer at Bossa Studios, Ian Maclure threw a stone into the pond by responding to journalist Jeff Gerstmann. For the latter, the theory of an Xbox Series S that would handicap developers “does not hold up“given that most of its games are also released on PC and are compatible with a wide variety of configurations.
Ian Maclure then intervened by saying that many developers dream of seeing Microsoft give them permission to drop the obligation to support the Xbox Series S. Remember that today, an Xbox Series game must be compatible and optimized too good for the high end console (X) as well as for the entry level (S).
“It might sound weird, but the reason you hear it a lot right now is because MANY devs have been meeting for the past year desperately trying to get the Series S launch requirements dropped.“, he posted on Twitter.
“The studios went through a development cycle where the S-Series proved to be a drag on production, and now that games are clearly being developed for new consoles, teams don’t want to repeat the process.“, he added before protect your twitter account to limit its visibility.
A week earlier, Rocksteady Studios’ Lee Devonald had preferred delete his tweets on the subject. Reacting to the news that Gotham Knights does not offer a performance mode on consoles, the artist had defended his colleagues at WB Games Montreal while making a clear allusion to the Xbox Series S.
“I would like gamers to understand what 60fps means and all the things it entails losing to keep the game running that fast. Especially considering that we have a current-gen console that’s not much better than a previous-gen console.“, he posted.
Responding to a follow-up question, Lee Devonald pointed to the Xbox Series S GPU, noting that cross-platform games should be optimized for the lowest performing hardware. Before simply deleting his Twitter account, Devonald also felt that a “entire generation of games is paralyzed“by the characteristics of”this potato“.
Last May, Alexander Battaglia of the Digital Foundry site had heard from some developers that the memory of the Xbox Series S could indeed complicate things. “Many developers told us that they felt the Series S was a bit of a pain at times, not because of CPU or GPU power, but rather because of memory constraints.“, he reported in front of the camera.
By chance or coincidence, Microsoft had rolled out an update to its SDK a month later putting “hundreds of megabytes of additional memory“available to Xbox Series S developers.”Developers have greater control over memory, which can improve graphics performance under memory-constrained conditions.”explained the manufacturer.
For Microsoft, the prospect of allowing developers to abandon the Xbox Series S seems unthinkable as this model, cheaper and easier to produce in these times of shortage, seems to represent a large part of Xbox Series sales, when it does not. is not squarely ahead of the Xbox Series X (this is the case in Japan). Some marketing campaigns, including one currently broadcast on TV channels in France, only highlight the Xbox Series S.