It has long been known that it is difficult to optimize games for the Xbox Series S, but it is very rare for developers to speak openly against the console. However, Del Walker, a former employee of Naughty Dog and Rocksteady, has decided to express his dissatisfaction with Microsoft’s current generation budget console.
In response to a discussion of the week’s Xbox news, including a release Indiana Jones and the Great Circle on PS5 and 30 fps for Promised, Walker saidthat it would be better if the S Series never existed.
I wish the S series never existed. Optimizing games for this console is so weird – I think we’ll see more games launched in the future that jump onto the Xbox.
It seems that Walker is not alone in his opinion, although other developers have not yet expressed themselves so openly. It is worth noting that Walker was not involved in the optimization Suicide Squad: Eliminate the Justice League for the S Series, so it is unknown what specific titles he was working on.
Back in 2021, Remedy communications director Thomas Puha noted that optimization for the S Series is not as simple as it seems. In an interview he said:
The S Series … is no different from previous generations, where the system with the smallest specifications ends up ordering some things to consider because it has to run on that system, right? It is easy to say that it is enough to reduce the resolution and texture quality – in fact, it is far from that simple.
Problems with the release were also discussed Baldur’s Gate 3 on Series S. Microsoft even sent its engineering team to help Larian with optimization.
Bottom line, developers likely don’t “hate” the S Series, but are annoyed at having to adapt their games for both high-end and low-end systems.
