Despite Xbox’s dedication to its less-powerful, affordably priced Series S console, a growing number of developers are bemoaning the extra work it creates. Because Xbox mandates that any games launched on its current-gen systems run smoothly on both Series X and Series S, it appears that an increasing amount of development runway must be dedicated to its optimisation.
Though developers have complained about it before, the latest shot across the Series S’ bow came from Larian Studios, explaining that optimising split screen co-operative play for the platform had contributed to its delayed arrival on Xbox platforms. This was then quickly echoed by Remedy’s communications director Thomas Puha, who said he felt Larian’s pain.
“It’s not about ‘just optimize at the end’,” Puha wrote on Twitter. “LOL. Naaah. You have to take into account the technical limitations from the beginning of development. Nobody really wants to think of that when you start making your game, when everything is possible.”
As Puha explains it, planning any launch on Xbox hardware must put Series S optimisation front-of-mind from the earliest stages of production. This is a stage of development where big, exciting ideas are still being thrown around before the overall vision is pared back in line with what the hardware can reliably produce and what the team can deliver. The limitations of the Series S mean that a lot of those big ideas must be pared back or discarded immediately, as it would be too difficult (and expensive) to optimise them later on. You can imagine what that would do to morale on a project that’s just getting rolling.
Previous instances of Series S shade have involved developers calling it an “albatross around the neck of the production.” When Gotham Knights revealed it would only run at 30 frames on consoles, the bulk of the blame was laid squarely on the Series S’ inability to run it stably at higher frame rates. Because the Xbox version would have to be limited, the PS5 version had to meet the same fate to avoid the appearance of giving it a clear advantage.
Off the back of that announcement, Lee Donovald from Rocksteady (which did not work on Gotham Knights) claimed this generation of games was being “hamstrung by that potato.” In 2022, reports surfaced suggesting multiple studios had petitioned Xbox, asking to ditch the platform and work exclusively with the Series X.
This scenario isn’t terribly different from that of the Xbox One — geriatric last-generation hardware that developers are still having to support. Sea of Thieves now barely runs on the launch model Xbox One, but as a first-party studio, Rare is still bound to support it. We have a clear vision of what the Series S’ future looks like, because it has already happened to the Xbox One.
I don’t want this piece to seem like I’m indiscriminately kicking the Series S in the head. The concept of the Series S is a kind of platonic ideal — a solidly specced console priced to capture a market that can’t afford its more powerful sibling. I think Microsoft had the right idea with this device. Times are tough financially, and it competes in a market sector where the only rival is Nintendo. Sadly, in practice, it seems to have already begun creating headaches for the very people tasked with filling out its content library.
It feels like we haven’t heard the last of this. We’ll keep you posted on any future developments.
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