Now that we’re a few years into current-gen gaming, the Xbox Series S has proven to be a bit of a liability for Microsoft. The weaker GPU has proven to be an issue for many a developer, with Alan Wake 2 devs pointing out its difficulties.
During an interview with IGN, Thomas Puha, the communications director for Remedy, pointed out how difficult it has been to work with the Series S. While Puha says that the CPUs are the same, the weaker GPU means less memory to store, which has proven to be an issue for these ports.
"There's a massive difference on Series S and Series X GPU... every game is different and every developer is different, but you can't have sort of the best of both worlds and you've got to choose where you're going to focus,” explains Puha.
Puha does assure Xbox Series S owners that Alan Wake 2 will run at a solid 30fps, but the Series X will obviously be superior. Still, it is disappointing to see developers limited by the hardware they have to develop for. We’re sure these devs are happy that the horror sequel won’t be coming to Switch.
"But we've really worked hard on getting S to run at a solid 30 and trying to maintain a good visual quality but like, if you want to see the game at its best in full next-gen power then it's going to be on the machines that have the hardware grunt to enable that,” Puha affirms.
Unfortunately, Remedy isn’t the only company that has struggled to make the Xbox Series S work. Larian Studios struggled quite a bit porting Baldur’s Gate 3 to the system, delaying its release on Series S and Series X before removing the online co-op. The fact this port still doesn’t have an official release date doesn’t help things.
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Fans looking for a budget ‘current-gen’ console can do much worse than an Xbox Series S. Just don’t expect it to be a ‘true’ current-gen system.