Highlights
- Xbox Series S, the cheaper version of Series X, is being criticized for its low-spec hardware and its impact on game development.
- According to a Remedy Entertainment developer, the technical limitations of Series S need to be considered from the beginning of game production, limiting what developers can create.
- While targeting Series S may result in less technically advanced games, its affordability makes it a popular choice for gamers and expands the availability of games on different hardware.
Xbox Series S may be a bit of a game development blocker after all, according to one of the developers at Remedy Entertainment. The weakest of all the mainstream current-gen consoles, Series S was designed from the ground up as a cheaper, more affordable version of Series X, with one of its big draws being that it would still be able to play all the "big" games, only at a reduced visual fidelity.
The value of Microsoft's low-spec console has been brought into question many times before, one of the most recent examples being the fact that the Xbox version of Baldur's Gate 3 is being held back by Series S, according to Larian Studios itself. That is precisely where Thomas Puha of Remedy Entertainment chimed in, commiserating with Larian over Series S's relatively weak hardware and its role in game development.
According to Puha, the communications director at Remedy Entertainment, the studio behind Control, the low-spec hardware of Xbox Series S isn't something that can simply be optimized for after development is done. Instead, Puha claims that the console's technical limitations need to be taken into account at the beginning of a game's production, which immediately scales back what developers could otherwise create if Series X was the only current-gen Xbox console.
Puha's statement comes after Baldur's Gate 3 boss said Series S isn't problematic for game development, it's worth pointing out. Moreover, some felt the need to call Puha out for his role in the game production process as a communications director, claiming it amounts to "just PR" when all is said and done. Puha, however, has been with Remedy Entertainment since 2015, according to his LinkedIn page, and it is likely that he is intimately familiar with Remedy's production pipeline and has some authority on the topic.
A developer at Rocksteady also thinks Xbox Series S holds back development and wasn't shy about voicing this back in 2022. Senior Character Technical Artist Lee Devonald said that Series S was "not much better than a last gen [console]," but the fact remains that it's just something that Xbox developers will need to contend with, as every Series X game needs to also run on the console's lower-spec variant.
Since Xbox Series S is cheap compared to both Series X and PS5 consoles, this positions the device as a key choice for gamers looking for more affordable options. Of course, it's a sound argument that targeting Series S's lower-end hardware means that games might be less technically advanced than they otherwise might've been, but making games available on a wider range of hardware is a boon in its own right.