Xbox Series S called 'a pretty big problem' for developers

Despite its popularity, the Xbox Series S is proving to be difficult for developers to work with thanks to its varying lower-end specs.

With the Xbox Series S providing less powerful graphics hardware - which instead suits 1080p and 1440p visuals compared to its sister console, the Xbox Series X - it has been revealed that the specs are a “big problem” for designing games, especially for the two separate units.

Check out the Xbox Series S in carbon black below!

The claim was made by Remedy Entertainment’s head of PR who said Microsoft’s Xbox Series S’ lower-end specs are a problem for developers. With the studio’s titles pushing the boundaries of hardware, as seen in Quantum Break and Control, it likes to utilise every aspect of a game’s GPU and RAM. However, with the Xbox Series S’ weaker specs causing an issue, we have to assume this isn’t just a problem for the developers at Remedy.

In a recent interview with IGN, PR head Thomas Puha spoke about what the experience of developing a game for the Series S is like. "[As for the] Series S, the CPU is pretty much the same as on Series X, but the GPU is an issue”, he said. “It really is. And then, having less memory is a pretty big problem,"

Puha then goes on to explain how the Remedy team has been working hard to ensure the upcoming Alan Wake 2 can run at 30fps on the Xbox Series S. "We often get, 'Okay, you make PC games, surely you know how to scale.' Well, memory is not a problem on PC. It really isn't. And that's one of the struggles when you talk about resolution and framerate. It's just not enough to drop the resolution heavily. That's what we're doing on the S and we're really, really working hard to make sure the visual quality still holds up."

"People accept that on a weaker PC the visuals are not going to be as good and your framerate's not going to be as good. There's a massive difference on Series S and Series X GPU. We've really worked hard on getting S to run at a solid 30 and tried to maintain a good visual quality. But if you want to see the game at its best in full next-gen glory, it's going to be on the machines that have the hardware grunt to enable that."

So it appears that if you want to run Remedy’s games at the best of their ability, you will have to fork out for something other than the Xbox Series S. Hopefully this is something Microsoft will take into consideration in the future.