Xbox Series S [XBSS] [Release November 10 2020]

[eastmen]

Well you did intervene in their favor which made me think you were aware of and in agreement with their reasoning, but ok we'll leave it at that.



There's a bunch of games showing the SeriesX with just a proportional resolution upgrade from the SeriesS, but the resolution is pushed too far up and framerate hurts in the process.
The latest example actually appeared today with Avengers, with the SeriesS rendering at 1440p and the SeriesX at close to native 4K while hurting in framerate stability.

You can see a discussion thread over this factor within the following posts:
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...al-discussion-2021.62207/page-42#post-2194749
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...al-discussion-2021.62207/page-42#post-2194760
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...2021-xbsx-s-ps5-pc.62138/page-28#post-2194802
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...2021-xbsx-s-ps5-pc.62138/page-31#post-2195223
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...2021-xbsx-s-ps5-pc.62138/page-31#post-2195274
https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/...2021-xbsx-s-ps5-pc.62138/page-31#post-2195284

Outriders, Valhalla are games in the top of my head, but it's a recurrent factor in comparisons.




I didn't avoid it, I just thought the answer was implicit in my previous post.

IMO the marketing message for consoles should be as follows:

- The PS4 and One/S are consoles meant for 1080p TVs on 8th-gen games.
- The PS4 Pro and One X are consoles meant for 4K TVs on 8th-gen games.
- The PS5 and Series X are consoles meant for 4K TVs on 9th-gen games.
- The SeriesS is meant for 1080p TVs on 9th-gen games.

The PS5 and the SeriesX won't do 4K internal render resolution on 9th-gen (or 9th-gen looking) games. That much seems obvious to me at this point, since the UE5 Demo worked at 1440p30 on PS5 hardware. They'll be rendering mostly at 1440p-1800p with upscaling for a 4K output.
And if the PS5 + SeriesX will be rendering at 1440p-1800p on 9th-gen games, then the SeriesS with less than half the GPU performance of either is most probably not going to render at 1080p-1440p, but rather at the same resolutions as the PS4+OneS for a 1080p output.

Right now we're in the very early stages of the 9th-gen consoles so all games are cross-gen (with 8th-gen game IQ), which is why the PS5+SeriesX are getting enough leeway to render at or close to native 4K in some cases (which is a waste of resources in the era of temporal reconstruction techniques and whatever FSR turns out to be).

To summarize, my point is about setting the ideal long-term commitment for a FHD or 4K TV output for each console. The SeriesS is the console for FHD TVs and the SeriesX is the console for 4K TVs. Recent examples show that devs trying to get the SeriesS to render at 1440p is hurting both the SeriesS and the SeriesX alike.
If the SeriesS is properly marketed and meant to be connected to a FHD TV then there are much more efficient ways to offer good IQ than to do 1440p render + downsampling to 1080p.



Your perception of agendas and push for tribalism is a bit irrelevant to me and I'm not going to avoid posting in open discussion threads because of that. Feel free to hit the ignore button if my posts cause you grief.
This is the last time I'll feed this subject.

So

1) How is this the xbox series s being a 1440p box that is at fault ? Should the much more powerful series x be able to run a game the s does easily at 4k ? No struggle too ?

2) Why is it okay for Series X and PS5 to not render at 4k internally but you have a problem with the cheapest of the consoles not rendering at 1440p or 1080p natively ?

3) You sure its not the devs being lazy about tweaking and taking advantage of the strengths of the new consoles ? Sure its not a developer designing the game for the switch or xbox one or ps4 that is holding back the series x and ps5 . How are you so sure its the series s ?

 

[Deleted member 13524]

1) How is this the xbox series s being a 1440p box that is at fault ? Should the much more powerful series x be able to run a game the s does easily at 4k ? No struggle too ?

Promoting the SeriesS as a 1440p console is pressuring some developers to render at that resolution, and the end result on many occasions is the SeriesS getting 1440p with unstable framerates.
There's nothing in the SeriesS' specs that justify a 1440p internal render resolution. It's using a 4 TFLOPs GPU with lower texel fillrate and triangle setup than the PS4 Pro or the One X.
With the inevitable "processing-power-per-pixel" increase for 9th gen games we're going to observe (not to mention the raytracing tax), I just don't see the marketing push for setting the SeriesS as a 1440p console as realistic.

2) Why is it okay for Series X and PS5 to not render at 4k internally but you have a problem with the cheapest of the consoles not rendering at 1440p or 1080p natively ?

My point has been to better send the message of segmenting the consoles for FHD or 4K TVs.
I believe down the line we'll see the SeriesX/PS5 rendering internally at 1440p more often than not, with a post-upsampled 4K output for 4K TVs.
Similarly, the SeriesS will be rendering internally at 900p with a post-upsampled 1080p output for FHD TVs.
There is nothing wrong with either.

At the same time, there's little gain from forcing the SeriesS to render at 1440p if it's connected to a FHD TV. It could make sense if there were many 1440p TVs out there, but that's not the case.

3) You sure its not the devs being lazy about tweaking and taking advantage of the strengths of the new consoles ? Sure its not a developer designing the game for the switch or xbox one or ps4 that is holding back the series x and ps5 . How are you so sure its the series s ?

Not lazy, just overwhelmed from having to develop for 7 different performance targets at this point.
They need to start somewhere, and for most cases it seems they're starting with the minimum common denominator in the case of Microsoft's 9th-gen consoles.

 

[eastmen]

Promoting the SeriesS as a 1440p console is pressuring some developers to render at that resolution, and the end result on many occasions is the SeriesS getting 1440p with unstable framerates.
There's nothing in the SeriesS' specs that justify a 1440p internal render resolution. It's using a 4 TFLOPs GPU with lower texel fillrate and triangle setup than the PS4 Pro or the One X.
With the inevitable "processing-power-per-pixel" increase for 9th gen games we're going to observe (not to mention the raytracing tax), I just don't see the marketing push for setting the SeriesS as a 1440p console as realistic.

Seems like an interesting take because again the PS5 and XsX are both advertised as a 4k box and yet we get sub 4k games from developers all the time. Its also extremely odd because microsoft is shown here advertising a first party game at 1080p 60fps ?

Have you thought about the fact that there might be other design changes between GCN from 2013 , 2016,2017 vs 2020 RDNA 3 that might allow it to render better at 1440p vs consoles at 1080p. I mean remember the Xbox 1 is a 1.3tflop machine and the ps4 is a 1.9tflop machine and both render at 1080p. 2.07millon pixels vs 3.686m pixels is a 1.7x difference.

My point has been to better send the message of segmenting the consoles for FHD or 4K TVs.
I believe down the line we'll see the SeriesX/PS5 rendering internally at 1440p more often than not, with a post-upsampled 4K output for 4K TVs.
Similarly, the SeriesS will be rendering internally at 900p with a post-upsampled 1080p output for FHD TVs.
There is nothing wrong with either.

So again shouldn't your real issue be with Series X and PS5 being called 4k systems ? Isn't it more of an issue that Sony used unreal engine 5 as a showcase event for the ps5 and it is only rendering at 1440p and yet they claim they have a 4k console ?

At the same time, there's little gain from forcing the SeriesS to render at 1440p if it's connected to a FHD TV. It could make sense if there were many 1440p TVs out there, but that's not the case.


Not lazy, just overwhelmed from having to develop for 7 different performance targets at this point.
They need to start somewhere, and for most cases it seems they're starting with the minimum common denominator in the case of Microsoft's 9th-gen consoles.

1440p downscaled to 1080p could look better than most low level FSAA options. They might also have 1440p as the target for when Direct ML comes out for later games. Or perhaps they just want to support most ultra wide monitors.

At the end of the day however who is forcing the series s to render at 1440p ? Surely you don't mean microsoft because well as you can see in the advert about forza they aren't doing that. They are advertising it as 1440p because that is the typical resolution they want developers to target. But that doesn't mean games will be forced at that resolution.


Your argument makes no sense logically
A) Microsoft is not forcing anything as seen by the amount of released titles not rendering at 1440p.
B) Both Sony and MS have consoles historically and currently that don't render all games natively at advertised resolutions
C) you don't actually know what the series s is capable of because no games have really be designed around its zen processor and rdna 2 gpu. The current games were all designed around jaguar and gcn 1.1 or something.

Anyway have a good day. Its not worth going around in circles. I think I summed up my thoughts on this well here.

 

[goonergaz]

Not sure if this is the right place, but does anyone know why my games don't automatically update?

I seem to have all the right options ticked, but last night I went to play a couple games and they both needed updating...

 

[iroboto]

Not sure if this is the right place, but does anyone know why my games don't automatically update?

I seem to have all the right options ticked, but last night I went to play a couple games and they both needed updating...

I've had this issue a couple of times, is instant on your power setting? If it's not on instant on, it may not always update when you leave it on over night. But I have also found on occasion this is broken regardless.

 

[Nisaaru]

Not sure if this is the right place, but does anyone know why my games don't automatically update?

I seem to have all the right options ticked, but last night I went to play a couple games and they both needed updating...

This seems "normal" on Xbox for years and I never truly understood how this "works". Sometimes I even have to reboot so it finds a Destiny update it wouldn't when I got to the upgrade menu to check.
The manual upgrade check also got painfully slow again lately since some update like it was for years. It was significant faster for some time. Checking the versions of 100 installed titles should be a trivial operation.

 

[BRiT]

Not sure if this is the right place, but does anyone know why my games don't automatically update?

I seem to have all the right options ticked, but last night I went to play a couple games and they both needed updating...

It can be a bit hit or miss because it doesn't constantly check for updates. I think it only checks a limited number of times a day and updates can be released after that time. There may also be a most frequently launched list and/or recently launched window that is checked instead of all titles.

Another thing is if the games have been migrated from a different console then the new console may not have the game "registered" as being installed. You will know this is the situation if you see this the first time you launch a game on the different console and it displays "Getting your game ready". That means it didn't have the title registered as being installed.

It's frustrating when it doesn't exactly work. I wish it was user customizable, like enforce check for new updates at set intervals or at specific time or at least upon system startup and resume or user login. It needs to happen more frequently and widely than what it does. I usually never have these issues except for two or three times a month so I probably just lucked out.

One thing that is nice, is their update system doesn't need to do any additional steps after downloading, like copying the entire contents over or patching afterwards, it all happens in a single action.

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

The occasional failure to auto update games was always an aspect of the PS4 that annoyed me. So far the PS5 seems to have resolved that, but I guess time will tell.

I do wish there was an option to just manually check for the entirety of the installed library. On both the PS4 & PS5 you can check for the updates of an individual title, but a "check installed library for updates" option would be a simple addition that would've saved me some faffing or waiting around.

I do wish companies would stop pretending there's no value in giving control to the end user. Some problems aren't computable. Some, it seems, are temperamentally computable.

 

[BRiT]

There is a check for updates section in the Xbox dashboard, so you can check all your games and apps at once. Then you can update all or select which ones to update. I think it runs quicker on the Series consoles than the One consoles. Sometimes it runs through the check fast and other times it takes a little longer.

 

[goonergaz]

I've had this issue a couple of times, is instant on your power setting? If it's not on instant on, it may not always update when you leave it on over night. But I have also found on occasion this is broken regardless.

It is - I’ve always had issues with Xbox consoles auto updates, never figured it out.

The occasional failure to auto update games was always an aspect of the PS4 that annoyed me. So far the PS5 seems to have resolved that, but I guess time will tell.

I do wish there was an option to just manually check for the entirety of the installed library. On both the PS4 & PS5 you can check for the updates of an individual title, but a "check installed library for updates" option would be a simple addition that would've saved me some faffing or waiting around.

I do wish companies would stop pretending there's no value in giving control to the end user. Some problems aren't computable. Some, it seems, are temperamentally computable.

Weird, never had any PS4 issues with auto updates. Always a smooth ride for me?

There is a check for updates section in the Xbox dashboard, so you can check all your games and apps at once. Then you can update all or select which ones to update. I think it runs quicker on the Series consoles than the One consoles. Sometimes it runs through the check fast and other times it takes a little longer.

Just ran that, took a while to come up with a list (previously tried and gave up waiting!)...8 games need an update, I’ll run it and see how it pans out.

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

Weird, never had any PS4 issues with auto updates. Always a smooth ride for me?

Weird is the operative word. There never seemed to be any pattern to it, but it was never enough of an issue to try to figure one out. Just every once in a while I'd tut and call my PS4 a twat.

 

[goonergaz]

So now the achievements aren't tracking...any ideas? I tried a reboot I guess I could try re-installing the game?

 

[BRiT]

So now the achievements aren't tracking...any ideas? I tried a reboot I guess I could try re-installing the game?

Typically achievements not popping is a sign of some backend being delayed. For some silly reason a lot of the tracking is done via online servers. The few times I experienced this, when I logged in later (half day later or next day) and loaded up the game the back log of achievements started popping. Sometimes the achievements tracked fine but just never showed the popped toaster on the console. Its a bit odd.

 

[goonergaz]

Typically achievements not popping is a sign of some backend being delayed. For some silly reason a lot of the tracking is done via online servers. The few times I experienced this, when I logged in later (half day later or next day) and loaded up the game the back log of achievements started popping. Sometimes the achievements tracked fine but just never showed the popped toaster on the console. Its a bit odd.

Very odd, and not helpful when trying grind points
The progress bar wasn't changing at all - however I just had a quick play and then suddenly 2 popped up lol :S

 

[Allandor]

Typically achievements not popping is a sign of some backend being delayed. For some silly reason a lot of the tracking is done via online servers. The few times I experienced this, when I logged in later (half day later or next day) and loaded up the game the back log of achievements started popping. Sometimes the achievements tracked fine but just never showed the popped toaster on the console. Its a bit odd.

general speaking. Esspecially the xbox is a bit to online-service reliant since xb360. Even the UI is much faster (or at least was) when the servers answer quickly. E.g. in the "good old days" my xb360 was really slow in the UI (actually it is slow again today ^^) and I joined the beta test program for the UI-updates. And what should I say, new servers/services that not all users use -> way better UI experience.
There is almost nothing in the xbox UI that doesn't need some kind of service answer. And that is really "ugly" for a stationary console.

 

[BRiT]

Very odd, and not helpful when trying grind points
The progress bar wasn't changing at all - however I just had a quick play and then suddenly 2 popped up lol :S

Yes, very much so. Glad they popped for you without too much hassle.

The change to make achievements more online driven is still one of the oddest change they made when they launched the Xbox One. I blame Mattrick (not really) but it was the way Microsoft was structured at the time, where the folks working on the Xbox One may not have ever worked on the X360 Systems, so nearly everything was rewritten. So many of the initial years after the Xbox One launch was partially undoing or "ruggedizing" the various console aspects.

The Party Chat system was another aspect changed just because.

I am glad they opted to keep more things the same with the Xbox Series generation instead of introduced yet more teething issues.

 

[Jay]

The first time I've seen the XSS in stock for more than 2 min in the UK.
Stock looks like it's been available for 3 days straight!

Maybe finally a current gen system that will have general availability?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

The first time I've seen the XSS in stock for more than 2 min in the UK.
Stock looks like it's been available for 3 days straight!

It feels like it's been in stock a lot longer than that. I realised I get could a Series S from pretty much everything several weeks back. That's when some badly configured bombarded me with stock updates for Series S when I want Series X.

Really regretting cancelling that pre-order now.

 

[Jay]

It feels like it's been in stock a lot longer than that. I realised I get could a Series S from pretty much everything several weeks back. That's when some badly configured bombarded me with stock updates for Series S when I want Series X.

Really regretting cancelling that pre-order now.

You could be right, every time I've checked for XSS and XSX via a stock checking site, XSS would come up more often but not last. This was the first time.
Think I checked last week, but maybe I never checked consecutive days enough?

Fact that the SOC is smaller, less memory and ssd chips etc may be enough to allow them to finally start to get enough out to meet demand.

XSX obviously also being split with xcloud.

This could make a big difference for them, especially with E3 around the corner. Be like a non paper launch.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

The last two XSX I bought were with All-Access GamePass. They are easily available that way.