The Xbox Series S Is Holding Xbox Back

Microsoft’s own policies surrounding Xbox Series S are helping it lose the war against PlayStation.

[Sonic1881]

Yup absolutely 💯

[Jin_Sakai]

But certain Xbox fans said it wasn’t. The rest of us knew it was a mistake.

[4Sh0w]

I actaully agree with this. S means they will always have to dev games with the idea that they must run on the S too. UNLESS they first push whats possible on the X FIRST then separately dev for S, with assets scaled back...no different than for example what they were talking about when they talked of dev'ing CoD for the Switch, but of course not that drastic.

[ocelot07]

But Jin remember the sliders. It's the simple case of sliders. Developers are just lazy and are paid by Sony to hold back there own console and the series x so they can blame the series s.

/S

[NotoriousWhiz]

I agree that it was a mistake, but there's no going back now. I'm going to enjoy my S until the ship comes crashing down.

[Crows90]

And we knew it was a mistake at launch. A thinking brain is invaluable these days.

[1Victor]

@Jim:” But certain Xbox fans said it wasn’t.”

But but but developers can make games based on the highest settings/console and just slide down the game settings to fit the lowest platform 🤦🏿

If it was that easy/simple we would have all 3rd party games running on phones.

[neomahi]

Dude, where do you come from? Are you a internet drifter that squats on N4G? You and.... Who is it, Foxtrot? The goober that has the Miles Tails pic. Y'all are everywhere, all the time

[Markdn]

They just need to. Come out and say its a Streaming box only now. What happened to that super powerful. Cloud. Best thing about series s is hacking it and making it a totally awesome retro box.

[NotoriousWhiz]

The only thing really handicapping the series S is the lack of memory, which is holding back Baldur's gate. Other than that it's really not that bad and perfectly fine if you don't need the best possible performance. Still better than last gen at most things. Only exception being textures and resolution.

[SullysCigar]

^ @NotoriousWhiz, they also scrimped on the SSD, all but forcing the need to upgrade with their expensive proprietary expansion. By the time you've done that, you might as well have bought a digital PS5, if you were a one console gamer.

[S2Killinit]

They would get sued like crazy. They advertised this machine as a nexr gen.

[NotoriousWhiz]

@SullysCigar, no one has to upgrade the SSD. If they have an external hard drive, they can just plug that one in and move games back and forth from the internal to the external. Also, if they're doing game pass, the streaming works very well over ethernet if they have a halfway decent internet provider (I think 10mbps down and 1mbps up), so that's another option to save on SSD space.

[SullysCigar]

Of course it is. Just like many said it would before it even launched, once the specs were announced. Some games still look better on last gen's Xbox One X than they do on Series S.

Microsoft went with series S to undercut PlayStation on price and try for a larger market share. That hasn't worked, but they've got themselves one hell of a headache, what with having to help developers get their games to run on it and then when they do, they look and/or run like ass.

[Crows90]

Xbox desperately wants a generation refresh once again.

In an attempt to get more market share they've once again given themselves a crutch.

The only outlier this gen is their greedy desire to buy up all the 3rd party in order to eliminate competition.

[ChasterMies]

“Microsoft went with series S to undercut PlayStation on price”

Microsoft went with Series S to undercut itself on price. These console generations really get going when the manufacturers slimmed down, cheaper versions. Microsoft’s plan was to start the console generation with that cheaper version. The problem as I see it is one of longevity. We already have games that run poorly on the Series S and those Series S owners won’t always be stuck with 1080p screens. Dead end technology is never a good bargain.

[S2Killinit]

I bet you the delay on all consoles is because of the series S issues running the game.

[shinoff2183]

They don't have the headache. Just a couple weeks ago they bounced the ball back in the devs court , remember them say do better at development or along those lines. Ms has washed their hands of this mess. It's the devs fault now

[Yi-Long]

Microsoft/Xbox just needs to admit this mistake and rectify it by dropping this requirement, so their devs are no longer bound by the Series S’ restrictions in terms of power.

[NotoriousWhiz]

The question is would it even matter if they dropped the requirement? While we don't have the numbers, I'm willing to bet that there are more Series S than Series X owners out there. So releasing a game on Series X might have dropped the already small potential xbox sales to something significantly smaller. Japan is the only region where we have a decent hardware breakdown and as of 6/25/23, there were 267k Series S and 201k Series X.

https://www.gematsu.com/202...

[EvertonFC]

Analysist have used data which suggests 72% ox Xbox console sales are Series S, not sure how accurate they are but I imagine it's somewhere in the ball park give or take a few percent.

[DarXyde]

I hear you and I don't necessarily disagree, but that's making up the lion's share of Xbox Series sales. That's a serious alienation risk. This is supposed to be their original Series console. I actually think their market share would be pretty good otherwise.

If anything, I think Microsoft's mistake was launching both at the same time and announcing the Series X first. It was a stupid idea and I think they were trying to catch Sony off guard by goading then into making the base PS5 comparable, then undercutting them with a budget device.

This is kind of par for the course with them though. They are masters of handicapping themselves. It's like they insist on each generation's hardware having a "character flaw".

Anyway, if you pull that plug now, I think you really run the risk of pissing people off. I reckon their best play right now is allowing Series S to stream games in Series X quality. That way, they can try to win people over with the quality of their streaming service and you don't need to engineer games natively for the Series S hardware. I think that's the ONLY way they can sort of get away with this.

[EvertonFC]

I did some math on that 72% series S sales and that basically means 4m series X consoles sold.
Not all of them approx 4m series X gamers will be RPG fans so I imagine roughly ONLY 2 or 3m will be playing Starfield how the Devs intended on Xbox.
That must be really disappointing for Bethesda to know and that's probably why they made the creative dicision of ONLY 30fps and blank the series X sales as it wasn't worth the time and money to implement the 60fps.

[DarXyde]

EveryonFC,

So you think perhaps the extra effort for a version of the game that will go largely unexperienced has given Bethesda disincentive to pursue a 60fps mode?

That is a very interesting point, mate. It's one that makes a fair bit of sense, but I would need to see more titles to see if this becomes a pattern.

As we get into more current gen games, I would be very curious to see what they do with exclusives. I don't think a game that's also on PS5 is going to forego a performance mode: by your reasoning, that is incentive to invest in a performance mode on Series X because more people will play it and there are no power fluctuations. It will be the current gen Xbox/PC exclusives that let us know as much. So far, Redfall and Starfield are missing 60fps. I'm genuinely curious to know where Fable and Hellblade fall.

[shinoff2183]

Ms did fk up with the s , but you just can't drop support for it. It'd be a complete disaster

[Flawlessmic]

The problem is, it isn't just holding back xbox, it's holding back all current gen games 3rd party games due to parity and must release on s rule not to mention increasing already super long dev times.

So everyone is paying for it unfortunantly.

[Hofstaderman]

Only as long as the developers allow it to. In Baldurs Gate 3 case they releasing their game and delaying the XBOX release.

[Flawlessmic]

Unfortunantly lariat are the exception not the rule, however I hope other devs see that and follow suite.

Release the game for the big boy platforms the moment they are ready and then focus on the s version, rather than make all of us wait

[S2Killinit]

MS doesn't allow that. They want parity between the two xbox consoles.

[Crows90]

And Microsoft knew that would be the case....which is why the release of series s is a scummy move and on too of scummy...it's also anti gamer as it is digital only and moves towards subscriptions.

[Aloymetal]

"And Microsoft knew that would be the case"
Bingo! People say this was a mistake but it was all by design, MS scums knew exactly what they were doing.

[Ninver]

Dude I'm positive MS has special employees sitting around the corporate table thinking of ways to shaft the consumer.

[Chevalier]

Just watch games like Baldurs Gate 3 start to slip away from Xbox. Developers will just use Bethesdas reasoning and say why bother with 2 more versions we can just stick to PC and PS5. Add in that most gamers on Xbox expect games on Gamepass and already buying less games and the decision will be even easier to make.

[XiNatsuDragnel]

Absolutely 100% imo.

[aaronaton]

"Microsoft is holding back the gaming industry" might be a more fitting title. As it was MS that launched and miss sold this console, now developers have to develop for it if they want their titles on the Xbox platform.
The only god send is that the Xbox platform is performing that poorly, that more 3rd party titles are avoiding the platform altogether. Games are too costly to make nowadays.

[Miraak82]

Every console of theirs's holds them back
OG .. first to pay to play online
360 ... RRoD
One .. Kinect, always online and marketed as a media box not console
Series S is the standard not the X to them . no exclusives . Can't market as the most powerful console now as S is the default

[Reaper22_]

They've doing fine because they've got you guys talking...lol xbox doesn't have to beat the playstation just like playstation doesn't have to beat the switch. The gaming industry is humongous enough for all console makers to be successful. Microsoft has come a long way since they've joined the industry. They've triumphed and suffered but they are still here and have some hard-core fans. They will always be the underdog but the future still looks bright. When this deal with Activision goes through they will be much stronger. One of the biggest games(Starfield) to ever release is coming to their console soon.

[Crows90]

This is not a redemption story.

Starfield is not one of the biggest games to ever release. Enough with hyperbole. Definitely a significant title that they bought permanent exclusivity rights to. Scummy move.

[SullysCigar]

"They've doing fine because they've got you guys talking...lol"

If you really believe no publicity is bad publicity, you should probably go check out Baalenciaga and Bud Light.

People are talking about yet another cock up from Xbox. They did fine in gen one, but then they got greedy and sloppy, so we had RROD because they wanted to beat PS3 to launch. Next gen, we got forced Kinect, always online and no game sharing because they wanted to rinse gamers of their cash, and now this.

The series S is graphically weaker than their last gen console, which is absurd, and they even stealth-mugged consumers by scrimping on memory, which would need to be upgraded with a proprietary expansion. Scummy.

[Longadog]

"the future still looks bright" -- lol. you guys ever get tired of putting this out? have been reading this line since 2012.

triumph? in what, consistently staying at the last place. they've not only triumph at that but they've been legendary at it

[shinoff2183]

Have they really though reaper, there best gen was 2 gens ago. I don't mean consoles sold either. Just overall

[Ninver]

Keep quiet if you have nothing informative or factual to provide. I'm sick of the constant bs being spouted as truth. It's embarrassing.

[EvertonFC]

It's embarrassing really isn't it, to think they are ONLY relevent because of gears and halo and party chat on the 360 and nothing ever since.

[Chocoburger]

I was going to make the same post, except for the OG XBOX I was going to mention the original terrible DUKE controller, which made playing every game worse than using a DualShock 2.

[Father__Merrin]

They lied about series s the engineers said its the same as series x but targetting 1440p instead. Reality is much more different

[hollabox]

When I saw the specs I thought no way this thing will be able to keep up. Good CPU backed by a PS4 Pro style memory, and bandwidth constraints. The S should of had 12 GBs at least, with 288 GBPS or more bandwidth. GPU core count should have been 2048 at it's current configuration. This would allowed for much better next Gen performance. Instead we have a 2023 console outputting 1080P several years in the era of 4K. But Dealer and Colt banged the table for this crap. Didn't understand specs and fake praise the console whenever they can.

[Father__Merrin]

If it was as they claimed ie same content but targetting 1440p instead of 4k then that's excellent tbh.

Reality is different.

[hollabox]

Anybody with reasonable degree of technical proficiency saw this coming. I was banging the table Lockhart would hold back next gen the moment I saw the specs. It should have been a 6 TFLOP console (1550 MHZ X 2048 ALUs, X2 SIMD) with 12 GBs of ram if they wanted the same experience as the XSX, but at 1440P. Some of the game don't hit 60 FPS or no performance mode. Some games native rendering is under 1080P with upscaling just to build at 1080P image at 60 FPS. Some games there's no RT of any kind, if there was RT, the hit to resolution is not worth it. Are developers using all the features? No, however, it's either too hard, or doesn't actually improve performance that much to implement. I mean MS doesn't even implement these features in most of their titles such as Mesh Shaders, Sampler Feed Back, and machine learning. XSX optimization now suffers because developers have to spend X amount of time trying to get the game to fit within XSS memory and performance profiles. If they develop for the XBSS first, essentially getting a game design around last generation performance profiles with maybe just a resolution bump on XSX. Overall, horrible decision, and MS were idiots for listening to YouTubers who don't get it. Happy with playing games on a 24 inch monitor at 1080P type people.

[Soulsborne]

Why listen to actyal devs when sweaty incel Lbots will tell you otherwise? The series S is holding back this entire generation as far as multiplats go.

[hard joe]

S stands for shit?

[anast]

Of course it is. They have to gimp all their games.

[TheEnigma313]

Ummmm we have been saying this back in 2020 before release that this would happen.

[Software_Lover]

I don’t even know why this console was made. STOP SEGMENTING THE INSTALL BASE. It just makes it more difficult and time consuming for developers.

[PunksOnN4G]

I still remeber the soo called devs saying the Series S has full rdna 2 and the same chip as sries X and that i would out perform the PS5 they really thought a 4tf console was going to beat a 10.2 LOL

[stonecold3]

even the clown over twitter still think ps5 rdna.1.5 and still hae the hide to say sony paying to hold the xbox version back then still said series s was more powerful then ps5 and claim the ps5 was the weakest.

[hiawa23]

This is moot. Clearly, the S is going nowhere, as MS is releasing the black one with no performance upgrades, so if it is holding back the X, well, it just will have to and if it is helping lose the war againgst Sony that some seem to keep pushig, MS seems to be fine with that.

Seems clear to me for a long time MS is steering away fròm the Xbox platform to where their games will be available to almost any platform via Gamepass, including the PC, so I expect MS will be fine no matter what happens.

[purple101]

while I agree with you, another opinion is that a large portion of the market are console gamers, its either pc or console right?

so by targeting gamepass on every platform, they would be loosing the console player segment of the possible pool of consumers.

Hardcore gamers would have a console or a pc, there not going to play a streamed game, from a Roku or Samsung telly or other set top box -

so, however cheap gamepass is, its not going to work, in my opinion.

subscription works with films, not with game, again, in my opinion

[EvertonFC]

Totally agree

[Binarycode]

Not really. Engines are made to scale.

Hence why you have lower rez and other graphical things turned down on the S.

Would it have saved time for only one console. yep.

[EasilyTheBest]

I dont get the argument. Engines are made to scale exactly like they are on PC. Itll take a little more time if your working on 2 different spec consoles but I dont see how its holding back anything.
Just make one higher resolution & higher fps & make the other one lower resolution & lower fps.

[hollabox]

That depends on game design and the lead platform. If you design your game around a bigger memory foot print, denser geometry, dialog, NPC, animation, all eat up 9 GBs at its base, the harder it be to squeeze into smaller footprints. Developers have said this as well, just google search XBSS out of ram, or developers issues with XBSS ram. They've been saying this since early 2021 so this is nothing new. With the PS5 being the market leader, more than likely it is now the lead platform for development, which hurts XBSS due to memory differences.

Anywho, so if base game code needs 9 GBs for example, this is before textures and effects, they already have to spend time and resources cutting out 1 GB of data related to game design on XBSS. Reducing geometry, reducing NPCs (See Street Fighter 6 comparison) or objects, and draw distance are usually the first to get cut. This is before you even get to special effects and textures. If effects and textures eat up 4 GBs of data, now you have to squeeze 13 GBs into 8 GBS of ram. Again, that's at it base acceptable look the developer deemed appropriate. Now they have to cut 5 GBs of content which effects game design from the base configuration. That's a lot of work and compromises that goes beyond simply sliders. Sure the sliders will affect special effects, textures, draw distances, shadows, ect, but it can only be adjusted so far from the base design. That's why simply moving the slider back like a PC is not always the simple answer, developers have said this as well.

[raWfodog]

“Just make one higher resolution & higher fps & make the other one lower resolution & lower fps.”

In this case, the issue has nothing to do with resolution or fps. Simply put, the Series S cannot implement the local co-op split-screen like the Series X can due to having lesser memory. They are working on it with MS support teams but don’t know when/if they will be able to achieve it. MS won’t consider dropping split-screen co-op from the Series S version so therein lies the conundrum.

[Rhythmattic]

Hang on.. Xbox is not a console anymore.... So Xbox "ANY" Series is holding them back..
Mwhahahahahahhaha

[S2Killinit]

No kidding.

[jznrpg]

It is holding it back game wise but they probably sell 10-15 million less consoles. Either way xbox not doing so good

[ravens52]

It will hold them back, once they actually start making games. I guess Redfall was the 1st.

[Demetrius]

Seeing how boastful Microsoft is nowadays mane they not gone drop the series s any time soon smdh

[CBaoth]

Remember when media sites were saying the G was comparable to a PS5? It wasn't funny then but it sure is NOW!

[nocturno]

WELL ps2 was too underpowered next to gamecube and xbox , and was the winner of that gen

[Chevalier]

PS2 had a whole slew of games though. The Xbox does not have exclusives to that magnitude however.

[blacktiger]

Wow you comparing Gamecube and ps2? Really?

[MIDGETonSTILTS17]

But… sliders.

[Spenok]

In other news, WATER IS WET!

[MontyeKristo]

Why are there so many comments by Sony fanboys in this thread? Sigh.. it never ends, nor surprises.

But, yes, it 100% is holding the X and, likely, any future installment, within this line, back. It was a gamble to sell more consoles, but it should have just been a Series X without the drive..

[Destiny1080]

it will also hold back next-generation at least until its completely abandoned, its the gift that keeps on giving

[Knightofelemia]

Just a XB1X on steroids minus a disc drive. If you are going to waste money on a new Xbox get a Series X at least you have a 4k blu ray player. Other winning factor a bigger hard drive and the games aren't nerfed like they have to be for the Series S. I know a few people who regret wasting cash on a Series S and where I live it's traded in a lot and comes up for sale used a lot. Yes the S is holding Xbox back and also a lack of first party titles are also holding Xbox back.

[lellkay]

Everyone called this though haha

[neomahi]

That and Xbox Game Studios first-party, yes. (Come on, The Initiative can't get it together and nobodies getting along, you know I'm right on this.)