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Phil Spencer acknowledges that it is "absolutely" more work to have developers code for both the Xbox Series S & Xbox Series X. "No doubt about that."

Raylan

Raylan

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kotaku.com

Xbox Boss Phil Spencer On Series X Launch, Halo Infinite & Bethesda

There’s nothing normal about interviewing Xbox chief Phil Spencer these days.
kotaku.com kotaku.com

I thought this might be interesting because I heard some fans saying that this wouldn't be the case. Which never made any sense to me. Of course it is. Weaker hardware, way less Ram and bandwidth; It isn't easy.
 
VoltySquirrel

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I think the important part of that statement is the end of it though: it's to expand the market. A lot of people, especially now, can't afford a $500 box. It gives those people an in without having to wait the typical 2-3 years for consoles to drop under $300.
 
pg2g

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Even if there were tools to scale down, you'd still have to tune and test things.
 
Omniblack

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Praedyth said:
There goes any idea of "some magical software will scale the game down" that some people had.
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Yea, but we know they have tools built in to make it easier. Also I think some people choose to believe that Xbox would've researched the scalability of their 2 consoles and didn't just develop a 4tf machine for the sake of it.
 
Spark

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True, but considering 95% of developers are also releasing PC versions of their games I assume they have the pipelines in place for catering for lower spec hardware.
 
SharpX68K

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When will Phil also acknowledge that developing for two different hardware specs will mean that games will never reach their full potential because they have to work on the lower spec machine. It is NOT only about resolution scaling.

I have been outspoken against Lockhart since the first reports about it surfaced in 2018. My stance on Xbox Series S has not changed. It is fine, excellent even, for expanding the number of devices that will run Xbox games natively. No doubt about that. Microsoft has an entirely different strategy than when they co-designed the Xbox 360 hardware during 2002 and 2004 with IBM and ATI.
 
gabegabe

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Omniblack said:
Yea, but we know they have tools built in to make it easier. Also I think some people choose to believe that Xbox would've researched the scalability of their 2 consoles and didn't just develop a 4tf machine for the sake of it.
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This. The way some people say is that Microsoft thought "You know what? Let's fuck up with developers and make a bad console! Mwahahahah!".
 

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RoKKeR

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Better to be straight forward about it. Like he said though, the goal to expand the market is a fair one for MS to have. As long as they provide enough support to devs.
 
Burt

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There are 4 threads on the front page using different quotes from the same article
 
Jiraiya

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SharpX68K said:
When will Phil also acknowledge that developing for two different hardware specs will mean that games will never reach their full potential because they have to work on the lower spec machine. It is NOT only about resolution scaling.

I have been outspoken against Lockhart since the first reports about it surfaced in 2018. My stance on Xbox Series S has not changed. It is fine, excellent even, for expanding the number of devices that will run Xbox games natively. No doubt about that. Microsoft has an entirely different strategy than when they co-designed the Xbox 360 hardware during 2002 and 2004 with IBM and ATI.
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When they release a machine that's a generation behind and can't handle next gen development?
 

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Well, yeah.

But then again, Spencer has always had something of a bias against Xbox that is clearly showing through here...
 
Azerth

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Theres a diff between extra work and harder work
 
jroc74

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Omniblack said:
Yea, but we know they have tools built in to make it easier. Also I think some people choose to believe that Xbox would've researched the scalability of their 2 consoles and didn't just develop a 4tf machine for the sake of it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
SharpX68K said:
When will Phil also acknowledge that developing for two different hardware specs will mean that games will never reach their full potential because they have to work on the lower spec machine. It is NOT only about resolution scaling.

I have been outspoken against Lockhart since the first reports about it surfaced in 2018. My stance on Xbox Series S has not changed. It is fine, excellent even, for expanding the number of devices that will run Xbox games natively. No doubt about that. Microsoft has an entirely different strategy than when they co-designed the Xbox 360 hardware during 2002 and 2004 with IBM and ATI.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
gabegabe said:
This. The way some people say is that Microsoft thought "You know what? Let's fuck up with developers and make a bad console! Mwahahahah!".
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These 3 posts can have the same reply: if that's what MS goals were, so be it. It's not a mistake if that's what their plans are and it works for them.

And I agree 100% with SharpX68K , lol.
 
SharpX68K

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Jiraiya said:
When they release a machine that's a generation behind and can't handle next gen development?
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Series S is not a generation behind Series X, but it has significantly less RAM, lower memory bandwidth and one third of the GPU performance.

What happens when games come out in 3-4 years that only reach native 1440p on Series X? Scaling the resolution down to 1080p on Series S would not be enough, unless the graphical detail and image quality are also downgraded. Not to mention ray tracing. RT might have to be turned off entirely, if not drastically lowered. Maybe 900p or lower would do it, but it all depends on the game, the developer and their resources.
 

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If it gets more people an ssd-enabled device, it's 100% worth it so devs can move on from crevices
 
RivalGT

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This was always the case, the real question is what performance balance can they get from XSX to XSS with out having to compromise anything from the game.
 
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