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[Filben]

Since every Xbox is coming to PC, they already need to implement fidelity scaling in their engines and games. They can always dial back everything for the Series S.

 

[Kataploom]

Nah they can run those AAA as long as they turn down some settings. You have lost the plot if you think most PC players are upgrading regularly to play "AAA" games.

Those that care the most about AAA gaming? Of course they are, but AAA gaming is not the most popular niche on PC anyway... I know many people playing on PC only the multiplayer classics like LoL and WoW, but having consoles for the rest, it's been like that since forever, the ones like me that won't give up on 60 fps for AAA will upgrade as regularly as possible.

Series S won't be the minimum required machine for all games, but maybe it will be for some (AAA single players mainly)... I'm not saying it will hold back anything, imo it's good enough to shine on its own the rest of the gen

 

[Robb]

No, that’d be a really strange thing to do.

 

[Kataploom]

He thinks series s is holding back next gen games while don't know PC platform is the one that devs used most of their resources because they need to develop their games based on the lowest PC specs their game can handle.

If games were made for Series X/Ps5 using those consoles hardware, lmao, can't think of how many on the PC platform will be able to run those games, just the VRAM requirement alone will kill majority of PC GPUs, imagine using 10-12gb vram as a minimum on a game. Those laptops with 1650/3060/3070 won't be able to run those games.

Well, not exactly... 8GB of unified RAM on 8th consoles didn't stop the 1060 3gb and 6gb from being the most popular choices for most of the generation

this mistake is that people think of the series s as a GPU and not a whole system. It’s capable of all the “modern” features a developer needs to make a modern game, and it does all that at a ridiculously low price point.

Hell yeah, I've seen many people saying the XSS is a "4TF machine and that is 3 times less powerful than the XSX" because they don't even have an idea of how it works, the TF count only affect the GPU and if by numbers we go, PS5 has 9TF so the Series S is barely half as powerful GPU wise as the PS5... For half the resolution it doesn't look that bad anymore.

And just to add some more light on the subject, the One X is 4 times as powerful as the Xbone... There's way more difference there than between XSS and any of the bigger machines.

There will be literally no reason for discontinuing the Series S, not even power difference. MS won't do it anyway, that would mean potentially losing half their hardly regained fan base.

 

[vaibhavpisal]

No, it's the other way round.

I would like to see Sony make a small, 5 TF version of PS5.

 

[DavidGzz]

It's not holding this gen back, it's keeping our res/frames high. A blessing. Umbasa.

 

[THE DUCK]

No, that makes zero sense, but they should add a portable hybrid at the exact same spec for more money that supports series S profile.

 

[Ronin_7]

Potato S should be available so we have something to laugh at in future Digital Foundry comparisons.

 

[Orta]

Yes, they should discontinue it NOW and place everybody who bought one on a sex offenders register. It is clearly teh worst console EVAR.

Fucking hell, the piss boiling that little box has created is pathetic. Its critics would do well to just fuck off and shove their own console up their arses, and we know well what choice of console most of them have made

 

[GymWolf]

Series S sells are good, so unfortunately no.

 

[Fess]

They have made the commitment and are stuck with it

Yeah they can’t do anything about it for another 3 years or so. Games will be sub-720p and sub-30fps before the generation ends.

 

[Kamina]

That would only serve to alienate half the install base.
Plus i don’t buy into that shit of some few devs that the S is holding anything back.

 

[VulcanRaven]

No. Many people have bought it because Microsoft said that it will play all next-gen games.

 

[THE DUCK]

Yeah they can’t do anything about it for another 3 years or so. Games will be sub-720p and sub-30fps before the generation ends.

Based on what? The massive graphic leaps we have seen in the first 2 years of this gen? Please. If anything the ports have improved as this gen has gone on.

 

[PeteBull]

MS is stuck with series S for next few years, at least till they launch midgen upgrade xbox series (Z) and maybe seriex x slim version, but for that we would need to wait to 2024 maybe even 2025 depending how good amd's tech develops and when they got access to next process node, so actual legit 4nm, maybe even they will want to wait for 3nm hence not sure if 2024 or 2025.

Xss will play all nextgen games, just at more visible cuts, like we saw already, so lower res/settings(usually it will translate to no rt, lower quality shadows, texture res coz of much lower vram and no need to have 4k textures if ur game runs in 1080p or less;p), and obviously worst cut out of them all- no 60fps mode and/or just 60fps target mode, not 60fps stable.

 

[IDKFA]

Is this a troll thread?

If not, this is an absolutely terrible idea. Microsoft would be sticking their middle fingers up to everyone who had recently purchased a S.

The public backlash would be extreme and it would massively damage the Xbox brand.

 

[In Cold Blood]

I was critical of their decision to make the S. I would have followed Sony and had a digital version of the X.
Since they made the S I would have hoped they upped the specs to at least the One X levels. 6 tflops, 12 gig of GDDR5 RAM and the Zen CPU.

However I was wrong. It sells a shit ton and the people that have them actually really like it.
At this point now the devs are going to have to actually do their job and use the tech supplied properly. None are using Mesh Shaders, none are using SFS to maximise RAM and none are using XVA.

And to the Muppets saying that the series S is holding back the gen, Steam Deck says hello. It's less than half the power of the series S and isn't going away any time soon.
It's funny that the same segment of gamers who are so "concerned" with the Series S and its effects on games, never seem to bring up the steam deck for similar "concerns".

 

[SoraNoKuni]

It's a great entry point for more Casual gamers, one week ago a female friend of mine just impulse bought in the premise of GP and the cheap entry point, and she already finished 3 games(smaller indies).

Only MS can offer such value because they dgaf bleeding money as they have a trillion.

EDIT: For a technical perspective, it certainly holds back visuals for everyone, but being able to converse and talk games with more people is a win for me, except when the Gaas dystopia takes place, then, ill regret this post.

 

[xrnzaaas]

Microsoft wanted to have more players join their ecosystem (and Game Pass) and they're not going to back down now even if the devs are pissed off with the weak console. We can only hope that Series S 2 and X Series 2 (or whatever they're going to be called) will be closer to each other in terms of processing power.

 

[bad guy]

The horror of having to manually change the resolution from 4k to 1080. Those poor gamedevs, so much work.

Also, forget raytracing this gen, even with only the X and 5 it will be rare.

 

[ANIMAL1975]

I know that there are a lot of mixed to petrified opinions on the Xbox Series S, the entry level SKU of the new Xbox Series consoles, but should Microsoft consider discontinuing the Xbox Series S once next-gen really begins and cross-gen becomes rare and uncommon?

I noticed the biggest complaints not from forumers but professionals, is that unlike a PC game optimized to work on lower settings, the Series S itself is partially a closed garden and requires extra work to do the same thing. This combined with it's weaker graphical capabilities means that developers for future next-gen only 4K, advanced effect, raytracing, etc. game engines, would have to manually downscale in these areas, or create compromised versions of the game that will load up when played on the Series S.

Now whether that's actually true is still in the air since there are other professionals saying the opposite, but both sides have a non-insignificant amount of people arguing both for and against the hardware from a developer point of view, and that tells me at the very least the hardware is polarizing even if the statements against the Series S are false or grossly fabricated.

At the same time, Microsoft has given two months of crazy deals on the S making it hard to raise the price back up, most likely the Series S will be able to reach $199 for a permanent price, and if they discontinue it, they will remove the opportunity to bring in those players who don't care about the graphics and will just want Fifa and roblox playing on a 1440 or 1080p screen at a mass price point.

HOWEVER, it's also true that 4K, at least the basic 4K without much in the way of features or HDR beyond minimum, has become more affordable and has been taking the place of 1080p on many store shelves, and in 2023 onward that will become more and more true so it does bring to question how future proof the Series S could be.

The Series S was expected to be losing to the X, and was predicted to be the winner by the end of the gen, however unforeseen production issues with Series X have changed the plans, and the Series S ended up being there to fill the gap in production of the X becoming the leading console earlier than expected. But now that the X is becoming more prominent with production heading toward being fixed in some months, it brings that into question.

BUT, at the same time, with 72% of console games being digital downloads, just being able to play Fortnite at 60fps on a machine that costs $199 in the future, is a good entry level device into next gen.

As you can see, many different views circulate online, what do you think? Should Microsoft discontinue the Xbox Series S as cross-gen dies and the X has better stock, or should Microsoft keep it going?

I'm not reading your wall of text, but no! I just gifted the thing to my son in Christmas (like many other people in the world i guess), what you asking is an excuse to devs dodge its support...

they already released it, many people have it, therefore developers would still have to make games compatible with it. stupid question.

This.

just give everyone who bought one a coupon for a series x and be done with it.

That would be ok too lol

 

[Fess]

Based on what? The massive graphic leaps we have seen in the first 2 years of this gen? Please. If anything the ports have improved as this gen has gone on.

Based on that we’re still playing cross-gen games. It’ll get worse, much worse.

 

[clampzyn]

why are people so fixated on having a pro version of consoles? we don't need one, if there is gonna be one it'll be more work for the devs cause they'll have another hardware to adjust their resources on how their game will perform, and games would probably be made longer due to having multiple hardware to developer for, lmao. Devs haven't even fully utilized current gen consoles, lots of features are not being used ffs.

can't even imagine how much budget did playstation put on GoW Ragnarok since they have to support ps4/ps4pro and ps5, if GoW Ragnarok was solely ps5 it would have a massive leap in visuals instead of it looking like a ps4 game with higher res and fps.

 

[The_Mike]

Xbox Series s keeps living rent free in some people in here.

 

[Alx]

Series S was never meant to target cross platform games, it was meant to be the cheaper option of the new generation because it was estimated that it wouldn’t be possible to significantly reduce the Series X price over its lifetime.

 

[THE DUCK]

Based on that we’re still playing cross-gen games. It’ll get worse, much worse.

I hate to break it to you, but 95%+ of what we will be playing over the next 4 years will be cross gen thanks to pc spec. or ps4 support. You'll see a very limited selection of aaa games on ps5 only by Sony.
Any new games planned by ms will be released on pc. It's not going to change at all.

 

[Chukhopops]

They are not going to drop it especially now that the price gap is wider than ever, that would be stupid.

I also don’t think there will be pro versions of the next gen consoles any time soon.

 

[fermcr]

People really need to give up already. Xbox Series S will last until the end of this generation and that's final.
It would make no sense for Microsoft to discontinue it at the middle of the generation.

 

[Fess]

I hate to break it to you, but 95%+ of what we will be playing over the next 4 years will be cross gen thanks to pc spec. or ps4 support. You'll see a very limited selection of aaa games on ps5 only by Sony.
Any new games planned by ms will be released on pc. It's not going to change at all.

There was a thread recently stating that Sony is moving over to next generation only for most of their titles , and we know that Microsoft’s studios has mostly moved over to UE5, and the Matrix demo is running at sub-720p on Series S (533p-648p lol).

 

[Aion002]

When is next gen coming? Current gen started 2 years ago...


Do some really think that magically games will be a lot different when they drop the support for the ps4 and xbox one?

Deal with it... Those so called true next gen games ain't gonna be that much different from what we currently have. 2 years in and other than games loading faster and graphics looking prettier (on current gen), the ps4 and the xone can play everything.


The Series S ain't holding shit back, they can always make the games run worse on it and push the X and the PS5 hardware.


SSD was the true upgrade to this current gen and guess what... The Series S has it.

 

[clampzyn]

I mean lots of triple A games did have a next-gen upgrade already, the diminishing returns are just in effect, we'll have to wait for Sony / Microsoft first party to bring out a game that will really feel like a next-gen game.

 

[Kvally]

 

[LazyParrot]

What's the point if it's profitable? They will have to keep the compatibility rule anyway, since they already sold millions of the things. If they suddenly came out and said Series S wouldn't run all Xbox games anymore after claiming otherwise for years it'd be an absolute PR nightmare.

 

[M1chl]

They should swap out XSX for midgen Series S (4nm node, etc) and give us XSX Pro Ultra Max

 

[Roufianos]

As long as PC exists, what's the point? Is the S really that different from scaling to low end PC specs?

 

[clampzyn]

Well, not exactly... 8GB of unified RAM on 8th consoles didn't stop the 1060 3gb and 6gb from being the most popular choices for most of the generation

Yea because games on PC have the option to go for lower settings, and no games up until now, on average, goes above 6gb/7gb vram target unless RT is on combined with 4k resolution and textures. What I mean is if devs targets a minimum 10gb-12gb vram as a minimum so they can push texture/visual quality, many pc/laptop builds won't be able to run this games properly.

 

[buenoblue]

??? It's by far the best selling Xbox this gen why would they discontinue it? There's more chance of discontinuing the Series X!

 

[DenchDeckard]

Yup, they need to kill the series S and just drop the price of the series X down to 200 dollars while they are at it, then all the people that the series S is designed for don't have to miss out on gaming and can just get a series X. Actually they should just kill the series S and the series X and give everyone a pc with a 4090 gpu in it for 250 dollars..plus free game pass. Yeah, free game pass for everyone for ever including all free games and free online....

Also...if you buy one and say you have kids they give you free controllers, and free headsets...

That should do the trick.

 

[clampzyn]

??? It's by far the best selling Xbox this gen why would they discontinue it? There's more chance of discontinuing the Series X!

Lol MS discontinuing Series X ? they should have just made a handheld console at that point, PS will stomp them if they stop making Series X as a direct competitor for PS5

 

[yamaci17]

Well, not exactly... 8GB of unified RAM on 8th consoles didn't stop the 1060 3gb and 6gb from being the most popular choices for most of the generation

consoles use a bit of ram for their own OS (around 1-1.5 gb). there is also CPU bound processes, that uses the total budget as normal RAM on PC instead of VRAM (such as physics, music, sound, game logic etc. none of them sits on the gpu budget. however all of them sits on the very same unified budget on consoles)

both ps4 and xbox one is allocating around 3 to 4.5 GB for GPU bound operations (textures, shadow maps, all that stuff). this allows all 3-4 GB GPUs to run PS4 port games gracefully.

2 GB GPUs however suffer greatly, such GPUs are being slowed by almost 2x due to heavy memory bottleneck + they have to deal with super mega low res textures that are not even meant for PS3 games

 

[GenericUser]

That is one way to make sure, nobody that bought a series s will ever buy an xbox again. Great idea.

 

[The Tourmaline Gorilla]

Did you make this post, just so you have a seemingly thought provoking post under your belt?

 

[clampzyn]

consoles use a bit of ram for their own OS (around 1-1.5 gb). there is also CPU bound processes, that uses the total budget as normal RAM on PC instead of VRAM (such as physics, music, sound, game logic etc. none of them sits on the gpu budget. however all of them sits on the very same unified budget on consoles)

both ps4 and xbox one is allocating around 3 to 4.5 GB for GPU bound operations (textures, shadow maps, all that stuff). this allows all 3-4 GB GPUs to run PS4 port games gracefully.

2 GB GPUs however suffer greatly, such GPUs are being slowed by almost 2x due to heavy memory bottleneck + they have to deal with super mega low res textures that are not even meant for PS3 games

Finally someone who understands that making Series X/PS5 specs as the base requirement would mean disaster for multi platform games on PC Having RAM on pc builds won't save you from lacking VRAM

 

[PendekarRajawali]

Another day, another Series S thread

 

[Rhazer Fusion]

It’s already released and sold quite a few units, so they are stuck with it. They have to commit because stopping support of it this soon would most likely really piss off at least half of their user base and that’s something they do not want especially going against the PS5, Switch and PC.

 

[Stare-Bear]

What’s the split in sales between Series S and X?

 

[nightmare-slain]

they'd be absolutely fucking STUPID to discontinue it it's been flying off the shelves since it launched. it was £199 there before christmas and currently £209. that's insane value. way cheaper than any PS5 and the standard/OLED Switch. Only Switch Lite is cheaper than it and not by much (~£20-30). it's not going anywhere.

i'd like to see a revised model come in at £250 with 14-16GB RAM and 1TB drive. if we're lucky maybe give it a clock boost for the CPU/GPU. nothing too crazy. the current model could be dropped to £150 for a while before being discontinued and it'd be targetted towards 1080p 60fps instead of 1440p in the latter half of the generation.

 

[Three]

That is one way to make sure, nobody that bought a series s will ever buy an xbox again. Great idea.

Yep. More than likely they would release a new cheap model (slightly faster, maybe more ram) and silently let the old one run like crap.



They will discontinue it much the same as the xbox one. It's not farfetched.

 

[SF Kosmo]

Only if they can bring the price down so $300. That price point clearly means a lot, still.

 

[RoboFu]

It really should be a bannable offense to continue this inane conversation that somehow the series s makes any difference to the series x.

It doesn’t, at worst devs will treat the s port as a throw away … lower all settings and go home. I think some of your do not realize that textures and sound takes up way more than half the memory in a game these days. Just lowering those and you can make a game like crisis core r run on a switch.