The Xbox Series S launched alongside the Series X in holiday 2020 as a less powerful, budget-oriented current-generation console. Compared to the Series X's $499 price point, the $299 price tag of the Series S was made possible by shedding the disc drive, offering half the storage, and utilizing a smaller chipset that was 65-70% less performant on paper, but retained the same feature set as its more powerful sibling. However, the longevity of the Xbox Series S has been a matter of heated debate ever since its reveal, as many believe the hardware acts as another lowest denominator that game developers have to worry about.
Game developers mostly aren't at liberty to speak about their experiences developing for certain platforms, but a handful have expressed concerns about the Xbox Series S over the years. Joining their ranks is former Naughty Dog, Respawn, and Rocksteady principal artist Del Walker, who last lent his talents to Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. Responding to a tweet about Xbox's recent misfortunes, including Black Myth Wukong's delayed launch on Xbox consoles, Walker supposedly blamed the Series S as the reason behind the delay.
I wish the Series S never existed, man. So annoying to optimize for that console - I expect we'll unfortunately see more game launches get skipped by Xbox in the future. https://t.co/97Ifpmtj9q
— Del Walker 🇵🇸 (@TheCartelDel) August 23, 2024
The developer scathingly asserted that the Series S is "annoying to optimize for," and that he expects more such delays in the future and games outright skipping the Xbox platform due to the budget console's optimization woes. Although a bit acrimonious, Walker's comments are rooted in some verity, as 2023 Game of the Year winner Baldur's Gate 3 also had to postpone its Xbox launch due to issues with optimizing split-screen co-op for the Series S. Microsoft eventually allowed Larian to drop the feature for the Xbox Series S entirely, which stands as a rare case of a developer superseding the feature parity rule for Series X/S.
Despite the Baldur's Gate 3 delay, though, Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke defended the Series S and said that the budget Xbox console is no less burdensome to support than the Steam Deck handheld gaming PC. Therefore, it's a bit difficult to pin down whether the Series S is a liability for game developers, or if they see it as just another hardware configuration among the staggering breadth of existing ones they already have to optimize for.
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Source: https://gamerant.com/suicide-squad-dev-criticizes-xbox-series-s-optimization-issues/
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