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Xbox Series X Being Held Back By Series S Memory Limit For Some Devs
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Some developers are having difficulty optimizing their games for the Xbox Series S’s smaller memory capacity in comparison to the Xbox Series X's much more forgiving RAM (random access memory) and generally superior hardware. Both consoles were launched in November after years of hype and speculation, but most players have been struggling to get a hold of either them or the PlayStation 5 thanks to an ongoing supply shortage.
While the two current-gen Xbox systems still play all of the same games, there are noteworthy differences between the Series X and Series S. The beefier Xbox Series X is more expensive, but it allows players to render their games at or near 4K resolutions thanks to its hefty 12 teraflops of processing power and 16GB of RAM. Meanwhile, the sleeker Series S isn't quite the graphical powerhouse its larger brethren is, sporting a much more modest 4 teraflops and 10GB of RAM, but it is the more cost-efficient option for players strapped for cash at the dawn of a new console generation. While this two-pronged approach to home consoles has earned Microsoft some praise for allowing fans a choice between affordability or higher rendering power, developers have noted that having two notably different systems to develop for has led to some complications in crafting and optimizing their upcoming Xbox releases.
As reported by Wccftech, Exor Studios COO Paweł Lekki, whose studio is currently working on the dimension-hopping mech title The Riftbreaker, noted that the Xbox Series S’s tighter memory limits makes optimizing games for both it and the Series X more difficult. While Lekki holds that Microsoft has “made good choices" in providing players with a more affordable current-gen offering and that scaling back a game's graphical horsepower is still easier than cutting back gameplay, he also states:
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“While we were able to simply compile The Riftbreaker for the Xbox Series X and it ‘just works’, the XSS requires additional optimization. Still, it doesn't look like it will require that much work to be running well at 1080p on the XSS[...] The size of the memory that is available in the XSS is the actual determining point for the entire console generation as gameplay features have to be fitted to the lowest spec.”
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This isn’t the first time an indie developer has criticized Xbox’s current-generation consoles, as Hazelight Studios director Josef Fares once said that the Series X has a "f---ing confusing name" - a topic that even Microsoft itself has broached. To its credit, the Xbox division is caught between somewhat of a rock and a hard place here - it sees a need to provide options to its diverse customer base in order to better promote services like Xbox Game Pass, but it similarly needs to keep third-party developers appeased with easier development platforms that don't diverse too sharply from PC or PS5 production.
Having to accommodate two different memory unit sizes understandably sounds like a difficult task for developers. While players will ultimately choose between one or the other, the games being created for the Xbox Series X/S systems must run well on both to maintain healthy developer and player relationships. However, it seems like Exor Studios has a handle on tailoring its Xbox Series X/S title for both systems, even if it has to tune down its game's graphics somewhat.
