Microsoft’s Xbox Series S Parity Demands Are Now Handing Sony Free Wins
Microsoft’s Xbox Series S Parity Demands Are Now Handing Sony Free Wins
Larian has delayed the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, currently on pace to possibly be 2023’s Game of the Year, until they can figure out how to make split-screen work on Series S.
Larian has delayed the release of Baldur’s Gate 3, currently on pace to possibly be 2023’s Game of the Year, until they can figure out how to make split-screen work on Series S.
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No Series S owner will be mad if a game has Series X specific exclusive content. MS is shooting itself in the foot
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Problem is that it can turn into a slippery slope. Where should MS draw the line if they start to allow Series X exclusive content? Can developers cut entire game modes from the S version if they just ask kindly enough? Or maybe ignore the S version completely? The risk is that developers are going to abuse this opportunity.
MS wants people to see the Series S as a viable purchase. Why should you buy it when you won’t be able to play the next big release in full?
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Yes, they should be able to say "this game doesn't run on series S" because it's significantly worse than the other options and it doesn't deserve the work it takes. It doesn't even have CPU parity, which is a much bigger deal than less GPU cores.
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That will just betray all the customers who bought Series S. Will they upgrade to a Series X to play the next big thing? No, they will probably just buy a PS5 instead. Why should they continue to stay loyal with MS?
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It's not capable.
They might have made the bed and be stuck in it, but it was a bad plan that substantially sabatoges the actual next gen console.
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I think people would be mad. Imagine you play a game at your friend's home on his Series X, and then proceed to buy the game so you can play multiplayer online, only to then have a certain features or game modes missing (say you get team death match but not battle royale because it uses too much memory).
It's not that easy to communicate feature disparity. Some people probably don't even know which Xbox they have.
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At some point, it’s on you to know what your machine can and can’t handle. They put big letters on the front of each game telling you if it’s able to play on the series X and series S. It is right there lol. 
Also, with smart delivery, it would probably be trivial for Microsoft to have a model pop up saying “this game is not optimized for series S and will not play, do you still want to purchase?”
No, the real issue here is developers (not their fault mind you). The moment Microsoft says “you don’t have to make it playable on the S,“ they simply won’t. Because why would you? 
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A dev team is more likely to axe Xbox release or features. So because S won't have enough memory/gpu grunt, X won't be getting that feature either.
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Why would they completely abandon Xbox just because the series S won’t be required? 
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S is required if you want to release a game on X. This means you cannot leverage the technical maximum of X, ever, because the game and all it's features must run on S.
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Yes we know. The comment at the top of this chain is talking about whether or not Microsoft could stop allowing that requirement and the potential blowback. Scroll to the top and start from the beginning you'll see. 
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You still don't seem to comprehend what I said. Hint: not about blowback.
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We know microsoft's current policy. It's obvious we do. Please stop this and discuss the topic at hand or move on.
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Are you really not comprehending what I said? To re-iterate: the cost-to-returns ratio to spend man hours for certain features is not feasible because of how much time would need to be spent. This, at worst means some titles will simply not have feature X, and at average means the "worst first" development method means some games will just be worse, than they could have been, if it were merely X, PS5 and PC to consider.
I think we agree that MS bungled their approach and overestimated that cloud powered gaming would take off. But the reality of it is that S has become a thing that holds down game development, and like with BG3, gives sony pseudo exclusivity on consoles. It's also likely what caused 343 to never ship couch-coop on Halo. It worked to some extent, but simply wasn't worth the hours to finish for S.
Sooner or later MS has to tackle the issue somehow, and if I had to guess, they'll rather push for a 0.5 gen jump instead of just screwing with people who bought S.
It's easier to say a game is "newest gen optimized" than to backtrack on their promise.
If you are talking about something completely different, then no worries, carry on. This was merely my 2 cents on the topic.
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This is a reminder to be nice on our instance
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