RIP to everyone working video game retail this holiday season who will have to try and explain this.
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RIP to everyone working video game retail this holiday season who will have to try and explain this.
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Of course it doesn’t run all the extra enhancements. They’ve already said its a 1080p console that can upscale to 4k. Its not actually a 4k console.
Retail guy “this is a less powerful console that plays all the same games just at a lower resolution to save you money “
see, even you are confused.
They’re saying the Series S won’t apply the upscaling of the previous generation X [One X] console, but will only apply the upscaling of the previous generation S [One S] console.
Someone fire the microsoft board who came up with the naming convention, please.
I’m not confused at all. it’s a 1080p console. Retailers can say exactly what I said and they are right. Yes they’ll get some newer games up scaled to 4k, like the ps4 pro does now, buts it’s still a 1080p cheaper console
It’s really really not hard. Cheaper console with lower resolution
Actually the point seems to be that it won’t be able to run any games beyond those already backwards compatible on the One or 360. So any future games given backwards compatibility for the One X won’t run on the S.
At least thats how I read it, after re-reading it a couple of times.
Any BC game that works on the One won’t get One X enhancements- only One S enhancements. After all, the Series S can’t load native 4K assets.
Microsoft’s decision to name every single one of their consoles a variation of Xbox X XX S is going well I see.
In a way, Microsoft have solved the confusion for retail by pulling the Xbox One X from sale. For the units that will actually be available for sale at Christmas, you’ve got the unambiguous ordering of One S < Series S < Series X.
I think the more concerning part of that news is that Xbox Series S/X games will need to have a lower baseline graphical quality than the top of the current generation.
I see people say this a lot about graphical fidelity, but aren’t developers already doing this kind of scaling for PC games?
For example AC Origins has Xbox One X enhancements (includinging 4K resolution), but on PC the minimum requirements say it can run at 720p.
So…. 2 out of there 3 offerings will be worse than their current best offering? (Which will no longer be available?)
It depends a bit on the workload. It looks like the Series S has maybe twice the CPU power of the One X, and much better I/O performance thanks to the SSD.
However if you want to be able to run software customised for the One X, you need to meet or exceed it in all ways. The Series S clearly doesn’t do that.
Xbox in Sox.
A Tongue Twister for Super Gamers by Dr. Seuss
First I’ll make a quick trick Xbox stack,
Then I’ll make a quick trick Xbox 360 stack,
You can make a quick disc Xbox One stack
You can make a quick no-disc Xbox One S stack.
And here’s a new trick,
Mr. Knox,
Xbox on roids is
the Xbox One X box.
But which is which, Mr X-box sir?
The number they do not make sense sir!
But that’s not all, Mr Knox Sir,
We made another stack of boxes
These sir, here sir, are new Xboxes.
Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X sir!
I think you said those boxes, twice sir?
I still don’t know which box is which, sir.
Mr Knox, it is easily done,
The One’s not first,
The first’s not One.
Xbox First
and then 360
The third one’s named
One next, silly
Then One X and One S next
and Series S and X are best.
Stop it! Stop it!
That’s enough, sir.
I can’t say such silly stuff, sir.
Very well, then, Mr. Knox, sir. Let’s have a little talk about games.
What do you know about Games?
Well…
The Xbox Series S,
will not run
Xbox One
enhanced versions
of backwards compatible games,
But will instead
Run Xbox One S
Versions of
Xbox One
and
Xbox 360
Titles!
Mr. X-Box!
I hate this game, sir.
This game makes my tongue
quite lame, sir.
I’m off to buy a PS5 sir,
and run MS games on my old PC sir.
I’m very late, but this is the best Kotaku comment I can remember reading. Excellent in concept and execution.
What’s confusing here? The X will run games better than the S. The end.
If a game is X enhanced, those enhancements won’t run on the S. But the games themselves still will.
It doesn’t matter if you are buying current or next gen, same rules apply for both.
Now if the Series S DID run the X enhancements, I’d feel sorry for people trying to explain THAT.
People aren’t surprised that the Series X will outperform the Series S. They are surprised that a current generation Xbox outperforms a next generation Xbox.
But this isn’t what is being said. I’ll admit the messaging is muddled, but what they’re essentially saying is: Series S won’t run native 4K (like the One X can) as it cannot do 4K. You will get the graphical fidelity of the xbox one S but and I quote ‘the Xbox Series S runs the Xbox One S version of backward compatible games while applying improved texture filtering, higher and more consistent frame rates, faster load times and Auto HDR’
So in other words, it will run games better than the One X, but it won’t run them in the higher resolution.
Auto HDR/better frame rate/etc > 4K to me.
Checking the specs on Wikipedia, the One X’s GPU is rated at 6 TFLOPs, while the Series S’s GPU is rated at 4 TFLOPs. So by that metric it is about two thirds the power of the top of the current generation.
Many of the One X enhanced games offered improvements when outputting to 1080p. If it was just a case of “not being able to output 4K”, then you’d expect the Series S to be able to take advantage of those improvements on the same 1080p display. That’s not the case here.
Taking JUST the GPU is not indicative of optimisation.
For instance, the Series S has a faster CPU than even the PS5 but obviously won’t be able to output better (or even run faster).
The only thing stated was it can’t do 4K which is obvious, it’s not a 4K machine, but it will have other benefits.
@pablo77: based on the information released by Microsoft, the Series S can scan out a 4K frame buffer: they’ve announced that it will support 4K video streaming services after all. When they say they’re targeting 1440p, it’s more about what resolutions the GPU can render at a reasonable frame rate than what signals it can send over the HDMI link.
And while the Series S definitely has a much better CPU than the One X, that doesn’t really help with running software that expects the higher GPU performance.
How can the company that made the windows 95 Start Me Up ad campaign also be the company who does this shit?
What is the likelihood of uninformed parent asking a store employee about enhanced backwards compatibility? Only a handful of 360 games were enhanced for xbox one x.
If you want a 1080p console you get Series S, if you want a 4K console you get Series X. It’s not difficult.
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