Xbox Series S [XBSS] (Lockhart) General Rumors and Speculation *spawn*

I assume they're still using the packaging structure they switched over to a few years ago -- https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/xbox-faststart-and-microsoft-intelligent-delivery.60370/.

It still relies on developer tagging and separating out the content appropriately. I guess maybe two different options for game assets, one for base and other for "hi-res" for Series X.

 

Whats the likely hood of Series S playing Xbox one gen games @ 4k?
for previous gen games is it gonna end up being slower than a X1X?

 

AFAIK pretty much all hyper competitive multiplayer FPS players play at lowest settings. One, for absolute fastest frame rates (144-200mhz or whatever they're doing nowdays) two, to reduce visual distractions/clutter during gameplay.

 

It can't play One X version due lower RAM, bandwidth and compute power.

 

As discussed prior, it's likely to have it's own BC modes, so while it won't do the One X tweaks it will still offer resolution and frame rates over the One S version.

 

I somewhat doubt the BC enhancements would be anything more than what was offered to unpatched games running on Scorpio.

 

The new consoles run real CPUs this time round.

 

Yes, but the unpatched games won't run beyond their original target framerates or resolutions.

Edit: Talking about BC, of course.


Cross-gen enhancement might be where the "1440p60 target" comes into play considering the jump in CPU power, and the raw flops are in the ballpark there if "1080p30" is what an XO game is targeting (or general performance with architecture improvement), but the original question was about running XO games. i.e. BC.

 

What happens with titles that have dynamic resolution on the base Xbox One? Did those titles get a bump automatically with the Xbox One X?

Tommy McClain

 

Yes they did, to the max resolution that was supported at least. I'm pretty sure MS has said that BC on Series X will more consistently stay at max resolution on titles that use that as well, so I'd expect the Series S will do something similar.

If there's no 4k texture support, then that's about right, except that there's some BC improvements generally, like HDR support for non-HDR games that will come online as well. And it's possible that MS will, maybe not at launch, but eventually, start leveraging upscaling AI to get 1440p textures (or 4k for Series X) even with unpatched games.

 

Don't forget PC. So add about 100k to 1 million more hardware configurations to what developers have to deal with that release on multiple platforms.

And then everything from 30 FPS to 200+ FPS. And resolutions from below 800x600 to above 3840x2160.

Heck I can game full screen on a side monitor that is 2160x3840 (portrait orientation) in some games.

If a multiplatform developer can't scale down to XBSS from XBSX then they aren't a very good developer.

This isn't a situation where the XBSS is lacking hardware features that the XBSX has. It's only a GPU TFLOPs mismatch and slightly less memory. Both things that are relatively trivial to scale for.

With releasing on PC there are MUCH larger hurdles that include missing hardware features, weaker CPUs, significantly less memory, different GPU architectures with their different strengths and weakness WRT rendering, etc. etc.

Regards,
SB

 

My opinion on this is simple.

Developer A is making a game like cod that sells 10s of millions of copies. Are they going to stop making it for a console generation that has a 150m + hardware units out there to focus on one that hasn't released yet and will be a fraction of the size of the previous gen for years to come ?

If developer A is making a game that sits between xbox one /ps4 and XSX/PS5 and they have a ton of assets done for the one /ps4 and at the same time have it compiled to maximize the new features of the series x. Why would they not take those assets and XSX build and put them together and run it at a lower resolution to get a version of the game that will run with next gen features targeting a lower price point.

At that point I don't think only the xss would benefit. Both ps5 and xsx would benefit because more time will be dedicated to tweaking and improving performance on the lowest spec machine and those optimizations will increase the performance of hte more powerful ones. It can also help on the pc side because not everyone will have a 3090 with 24 gigs of ram. There are 2050s out there now and I am sure Nvidia and AMD will have a range of next gen cards from $200 and up in price that a lot of people will buy.

Also again developers have been building and maintaining last gen engines for years. The effort taking a ps4/one game and making it run on a xss or ps5/xsx is going to be a piece of cake. MS showed us that with how quickly they said Gears was ported and it had great performance seemingly rivaling a 2080.

For sony they have a vested interest in making sure the ps5 sells well because they want to be the platform to own for the next cycle of consoles which is about 7 years , They do this by providing their single player franchises both new and old. Since they are one company it makes sense to focus on just the ps5 going forward. With MS they want to move past hardware cycles and have customers on an netflix like service where they continue to pay monthly forever and play on the device of their choosing. For them right now their cloud is xbox one so it makes sense to target that but how much longer does it make sense to do that ? My guess is another year to two years as thats how long it will take to fully transition to xsx cloud hardware. But for 3rd party companies... they don't care about who's platform they are on as long as they are able to reach the most amount of customers and make the most amount of money. So that is why Doom will run on the highest end pcs all the way down to the switch. Because if they can spend a few million on getting the game running right on the switch it can be millions of copies sold.

So that is the thing is it easier to take a XSX game and port it to XSS or take that XSX game and bring it down to the Switch? Why was Bethesda able to take a game running on top of the line pcs and get it to run on the switch?

 

If you look back in the first 12-18 months of this generation you'll note that publishers dropped lastgen consoles really bloody quick. Some games announced for 360 and PS3, like Dying Light, were dropped entirely - not even getting a crappy port. Games like Shadow of Mordor lost key mechanics like the Nemesis system.

I'd guess that overall, the people who buy into new generation console hardware in the first 12-24 months are probably buying more games on average than those who are sticking with their current console and it's very likely a very disproportionate split. Otherwise, as you say, publishers wouldn't be as keen to drop older hardware.

It's probably a complex decision, you may cut off some of your prospective customers but if you save more by sacrificing what might be considerable development effort not having to make this new game run on this 8-9 years old piece of hardware, then you may save overall. It's a business, after all.

 

So your saying for the first year or two 3rd party developers targeted last gen game and added on new effects or features for the new systems ?

Your right that its a complex decision. I will counter this by saying that its a seesaw like situation. The further into the generation the less reason there is to support the older hardware. I am sure that by Holiday 2021 there will be over 20m next gen systems out in peoples hands. By 2022 they could be around 50m or more depending on how it goes. So it makes sense to start to switch.

At the same time last gen there wasn't a switch like console. The switch continues to sell better and better and the hardware is still hard to find and going for higher prices. So what is going to happen ? If your trying to get your next gen console game to also run on the switch then the XSS is the easiest stop on the route down and followed by the XOX and then the Ps4 pro and then the ps4 and then the xbox one s and finally the switch. I am sure as you move down the ladder rung by rung it gets harder and harder to support . Moving to an XSS your likely giving up Resolution both render resolution and texture resolution but all effects should still run. Moving to the last gen consoles your going to sacrifice resolution , textures resolution , next gen effects and benefits of the ssds like load times. The switch.... your going to give up all that again and then some.

I have no doubt we will see a new switch in the future. Be it a switch pro or a switch 2 but when ? and even then you still have tens of millions of switches sold and still selling each quarter till then.


I dunno man I find the hang up on the Series S to be misplaced. I find the hang up that last gen system support is going to ruin next gen as misplaced. People are still going to go out and buy cyberpunk and all the games that were developed with last gen hardware first in mind.

 

I don't have an encyclopaedic recollection of all games announced for 360/PS3 that failed to make the grade come crunch but it was a fair few. Ubisoft had already decided that 2014's Assassin's Creed Unity was 'nextgen' only, as was The Crew and several other prominent titles. Activision were knocking out very shit ports of COD on last gen and EA, the greediest bastards of all time, decided that even low-effort ports of Peggle 2 were not worth it just six months after PS4/XBO launched. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It was pretty rapid. There were games rebased, if you look at the quantity rather than the quality, it looks good. But on some occasions it was borderline shovelware.

Definitely. In 2014, previous gen got dumped bad. There were still plenty of low-effort ports of 'AAA' games but they were about as good as can could expect them to be on consoles with a 16th of available RAM and no guarantee of a HDD.

 

Last gen was a extremely large jump compared to this gen. 360 era only had 512mb of ram to work with. Imagine designing a game that ran on both without significant sacrifices.

 

How about Peggle 2? I mean, the original PlayStation managed Tomb Raider and G-Police, but Peggle 2 on the PS3? Get real, man. Not happening.

 

2014 was still pretty decent and we did get stuff like Rise of the Tomb Raider in 2015 and battlefield hardline and mortal kombat.

So stuff did continue for about 2 years after release. I am sure it depends on how late a game was started for the gen that is replaced.

 

Of course you can find some good games released on last gen in 2014 and even 2015 but they were becoming rarer. As I said, many releases were pale imitations of their current gen (PS4/XBO) games. By the way, Mortal Kombat X? That was cancelled on previous gen. Which is my point!