„Xbox Series S Means Trouble,” Says Remedy's Technical Producer

Control and Alan Wake developer has concerns about Xbox Series S.

Since yesterday, Microsoft's new consoles are the hottest topic in the industry. This includes the confirmed Xbox Series S, the much cheaper alternative to XSX, which - despite the jokes from its looks - has aroused lively interest among the players. However, the enthusiasm is not entirely shared by some game developers. This was expressed by Sasan Sepehr, a senior technical producer at Remedy Entertainment. On Twitter, he briefly commented on Microsoft's announcement, which, in his words, pleases him as a player, but means touble from a professional perspective.

Sepehr did not dwell on what he meant by "trouble". In his next entry, he confirmed that he was concerned about optimization, probably in relation to the "next-gen performance" of Xbox Series S, referred to in Microsoft announcement. Developers working on titles for ninth-generation platforms will have to ensure that the game does not run on two consoles (as before), but on three. Although both new Xboxes are based on identical hardware architecture (if we believe the leaks so far), they differ in technical parameters. Nevertheless, Microsoft has promised that every game on Xbox Series X will also run on the S Series model (although probably in lower resolution). So if developers want to release their work on XSX, they will also have to spend time and resources to optimize it for a weaker console.

Control was one of the titles whose optimization on consoles left much to be desired.

Sepehr undoubtedly realizes that optimizing a game is not a mere formality. Remedy Entertainment found out about it on the occasion of Control's release. The title was a real pain for the owners of PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, with animations that sometimes displayed astounding 10 fps. So it's easy to understand studio's concerns about "next-gen performance" on Xbox Series X's weaker cousin.

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