Just how powerful is it? (pic: Microsoft)
A reader refutes suggestions that the Xbox Series S is so underpowered that it’s ‘hamstrung’ the current generation of consoles.
Last week, when I read in the news about the Xbox Series S holding back the new generation of consoles, because of Gotham Knights being 30fps, I was just laughing ‘cause the so-called developer [to be clear, two developers have said similar things and neither worked on Gotham Knights – GC] made comments without taking a second to look around and see what games run at 60fps on the Xbox Series S and what games have performance mode on the console.
There’s plenty of new gen-only games that run at 60fps on the Xbox Series S, like Deathloop, Metal: Hellsinger, Scorn, Hell Let loose, Serious Sam 4, Soulstice, and Microsoft Flight Simulator, which runs above 100fps on the 120Hz mode even though it’s one of the most demanding games on console and also a new-gen only game that Xbox Series S handled pretty well.
But it doesn’t stop there, even the notorious Cyberpunk 2077, which is well known for its performance issues, is now a solid 60fps game on the Xbox Series S with patch 1.6. Even though the game is open world, has a much larger map than Gotham Knights, and much better graphics, it runs at a solid 60fps. This clearly makes the Rocksteady developer’s comments on twitter absolutely wrong.
in addition, to the new gen games mentioned before, the Xbox Series S runs more than 80 cross-gen games released in the last three years at 60fps or above. For example, Doom Eternal 120fps, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla 60fps, DiRT 5 120fps, Gears 5 multiplayer 120fps/campaign 60fps, Halo Infinite 120fps, etc.
You can check a list of 120fps games here, but don’t confuse the games mentioned with the ‘FPS boost’ games, because the mentioned games don’t need FPS boost to run at 60/120fps, there are 134 games that benefit from FPS boost on Xbox Series S which you can check here.
People see the word developer and they run with it, forgetting that a dev is a human being who can be wrong or biased. I’ve seen someone mentioning Halo infinite being held back by the Xbox Series S, this person either forgets or ignores the fact that Halo Infinite was always planned for the Xbox One and it was released on it, a console that is nine years old and is three times weaker than the Xbox Series S, so how come that the Xbox Series S gets the blame instead of the Xbox One? That was also another wrong argument.
Another thing to mention is that Gotham Knights is on PC, and the PC has an insanely wide range of hardware. You can only imagine how many GPUs and CPUs models are out there, especially the ones that are weaker than the Xbox Series S, and Gotham Knights developers had no issues or comments on optimising the game for ‘potatoes’ like the GTX 1050 , RX480, GTX 1650, etc.
If the developer comments that ‘well, the Xbox Series S exists’ then that also means “well, the GTX 1050 exists’ and their game will be locked at 30fps for the RTX 3090, which is absolutely insane to say.
Gotham Knights has major performance issues even on the most powerful PCs. the RTX 4090 paired with a Ryzen 5950x and 128GB of RAM runs the game at 40fps in open areas, which leads us to ask how, if the developer can’t make the game work on the most powerful PC hardware, can they make it 60fps on $500 consoles which have much weaker hardware? This seems to prove it is definitely a developer issue rather than a hardware issue. Even if the Xbox Series S version was dropped, I promise you the game would still be 30fps.
Back in May 2022 some developers told Digital Foundry that the Xbox Series S is causing them trouble with development, mainly due to memory constraints and nothing to do with the GPU or CPU. Three months later Xbox increased the memory of the Xbox Series S by sending the developers the June Game Development Kit (announcement here) which allows developers more freedom and space to access games and boost performance.
So the only problem that a lot of developers complained about has been fixed and the reason why we take their comments and complaints is because they were plenty of devs, unlike one person from Rocksteady, two people if we add the person who made I Am Fish and Surgeon Simulator.
This person also made me laugh a bit too hard, because I’m playing games like Cyberpunk 2077, Doom Eternal, Forza Horizon 5, etc. at a smooth 60fps and 120fps and a guy tells me he can’t make a Surgeon Simulator type of games work on Xbox Series S. Bit funny don’t you think? Unless he’s making a game bigger and more ambitious than Cyberpunk 2077 or Deathloop, then I apologise and I’m totally wrong.
Also, I’m hearing that Gotham Knights got or will potentially get a 60fps patch and I wish that people who blame Xbox Series S will show up and tell us why the game is suddenly 60fps.
The Xbox Series S is a great value for gamers who’re looking for a budget friendly console paired with Game Pass for the ultimate low cost living room gaming experience. Lots of games are 60fps/120fps and lots of games will be.
Xbox Series S didn’t hold, and will not hold, this new generation back. Even the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, which are three to four times weaker than the Xbox Series S, and almost one decade old, are still receiving games in 2022 and will get games even in 2023. People need to relax and enjoy gaming.
By reader SamChaoui
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A reader refutes suggestions that the Xbox Series S is so underpowered that it’s ‘hamstrung’ the current generation of consoles.