Trine 5 Dev: Xbox Series S is a 'Nice Option' for Consumers, But Can be a 'Bottleneck' for Devs - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 August 2023 / 5,374 Views
Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy developer Frozenbyte's marketing manager Kai Tuovinen in an interview with GamingBolt was asked about his thoughts on the Xbox Series S and said it is a good option to have for consumers, however, it can be a bottleneck for developers.
"More powerful hardware is always better from a developer perspective," said Touvinen. "I think for more graphically intensive games the Series S can become a bottleneck as supporting it is required. From a player perspective I guess it’s a nice option to have a more affordable console though."
Trine 5: A Clockwork Conspiracy will launch for the PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC via Steam this Summer.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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That's a bit generic I wish he would have provided a more precise scenario.
When it comes to bottleneck, literally every defined hardware can and will be a bottleneck, and the system being a nice option is frankly all that matters.
Edit: to precise my thought, let's say you were to ask a dev why game X is not native 4k 60fps on console Y (let alone 120fps which would be the target if they were absolutely no bottleneck), then he could answer "Because hardware Y can be a bottleneck" it is an extremely generic answer, but it's true, it always is.
According to Phil Specter Starfield isnt 60fps because of artistic choice.
His word were creative choice, it only mean that the scope they were aiming for could not fit in a 60 fps envelop with consistency and they choose to remain true to their creative vision rather than scope it down to satisfy a 60fps design. That's what they mean by creative choice,
It's not a choice to go 30 for the sake of having a 30 FPS feeling.
Of course this is obvious. I’m just surprised a dev actually came out and said it.
It doesn't really matter. Every single time someone says something negative about the Series S and bottle necking their opinion is just hand waved away. Baulders Gate 3 is being delayed because of the series s. I didn't check comments but I'm sure people found a way to hand wave that also.
Can't find anything on Larian's website but there is this:
https://www.eurogamer.net/split-screen-is-a-must-for-baldurs-gate-3-on-xbox-series-s-says-larian
However, it seems the game will be able to run on the steam deck at launch so power wise the Series S shouldn't be a problem, perhaps something else is the issue.
But the Series S has more horsepower overall than the SteamDeck, especially since it can run at higher wattages since it's not a mobile device. And the Series S has fewer layers of abstraction (the SteamDeck is Linux running a Windows emulation layer when necessary) which likely means the Series S can use its memory more efficiently.
Sure but when devs make games they need a certain amount of RAM and that's that. Having a better CPU, GPU, more wattage all of that is great. If the dev needs more RAM to work with though none of that other stuff will matter.
For instance I played Hogwarts legacy and I have a great GPU/CPU etc. Guess what was holding back my performance? RAM. Didn't matter that I had a $1000 GPU and one of the top CPUs on the market. My RAM was being maxed out by the game and I needed more. Bought more RAM on Amazon and I was good to go.
So if the game can run on the Steamdeck than in this instance it might just be a RAM issue. Not to mention MS made changes in the past to increase the amount of available RAM for devs. Everything I've read on this topic honestly points to the amount of RAM being the main issue with the Series S.
Well, sort of. There are things you can do when you are RAM-constricted, such as scale back texture quality.
And my points about the SteamDeck perhaps needing more RAM to do the exact same thing as the Series S still stand, though (due to the greater levels of abstraction in the SteamDeck).
I do agree that the Series S would have been better off with 12 GB of RAM, though. The RAM is the biggest bottleneck in the Series I think.
Which memory limitation? Lower graphic setting should make it really not a problem if it run on Series X.
No system is without its bottlenecks. With the Xbox One and PS4 generation, developer chatter was that the CPUs were too underpowered. With the Series S, there's been some developer chatter that the RAM isn't quite as high as they'd prefer relative to the PS5 and Series X (10g vs. 16gb). Based on some developer chatter, 12 GB would have been more like it for the Series S.
It depends on the game, though. Forza Horizon 5 looks and plays really well on the Series S, as one example of many.
Pretty much anything can be made to run on a reduced memory footprint, the question is whether the compromises are too great. Some developers have been very successful at optimizing for the Series S, others less so.
Specifically on the Xbox Series consoles, the Series S has 8.2 GB or so available for games, and the Series X has 13.5 GB. So the Series X having more than 60% more RAM is maybe more a bigger differential than is optimal.
I still love my Series S, though, and with more RAM it would have cost more, so c'est la vie. :)
Well devs also said the opposite so what's your point? Do you find it also obvious?
With publishers claiming that games are costing hundreds of millions to make and market, causing them to cut costs by rushing games, laying off Devs and adding so many additional monetisation methods I think the industry needs a limiter.
I can see some of the more demanding developers running into bottlenecks like Take Two on the next GTA, but come on the developers of Trine are not pushing any systems to their limits.
Yeah, this is silly. There are games that have to scale all the way down to the SteamDeck and the PS4 still. The Series S easily beats those systems.
A marketing manager.........anyways, Series S certainly seems like it will be a bottleneck years down the road, yet games like Red Dead Redemption 2, Ghost of Tsushima, and Last of Us Part II were graphical powerhouses that ran on last-gen hardware. And that was towards the end of the last generation! Developers are able to accomplish amazing things with the right time and resources.
As a side note, kinda funny that a marketing manager is criticizing the Series S on its power while the game he's working on marketing for is also coming to the Switch lol.
These devs need to get off their high horse. PC gaming also have low tiers. S is an X, just run it at a lower resolution and maybe drop some frames. Its been made pretty simple.
No different to a 1080 and a 3080, make the right sacifices.
Exactly. I bet most devs would rather optimize an Xbox Series game for the S than to try to make a high-spec game run on a SteamDeck!
And let's not even talk about Sony still selling PS4s (2013 tech), and Nintendo still selling the Switch (2017 tech). The Series S runs rings around the Deck, the PS4, and the Switch.
Well thank you for nothing, Captain Obvious... This was a bet from Xbox to have more people with access to their enviroment, and thanks to that, I can play xbox exclusives.
Has that dev made a good game?
Apple defenders vs MS defenders, what is worse? Seriously though, the S is a weak and probably deserves the ridicule.
When someone other than Apple develops a laptop similar to Air with the power, battery life, ease of use, and no crashes, glitches, virus's, or blue screens of deaths, I will take a look at it.
If that is your experience with windows then you are computer illiterate, sorry. The air serves no purpose other than throttle at high load and cost a dumb amount of money for surfing the net and general office tasks.
I burned trough a basic hp latop, an hp envy, and a an expensive Sony Vaio in the span of about 7 years with all of them dying on me. My work Acer laptop is terrible as well. My 2015 Air lasted me 7 years, and is still running like the day I got it. Upgraded to the M2 air recently and plan on using it for the next 7 years as well.
You are playing into his example rather eloquently. And now, so am I. But at-least I recognize it. :P
If you ruined a HP Laptop, HP Envy, Sony Vaio, maybe the issue isn't so much the PC, but how you are using these devices?
Everything I have owned in the laptop world has lasted years, still got a Pentium M notebook from 2003 running fine... It's Magnesium unibody has stood the test of time.
The M2 though...
1) Doesn't have an OLED display.
2) Lacks GPU power.
3) Doesn't have the longest battery life. (Acer Chromebook 514 is superior.)
4) Doesn't flip/fold loosing some utilitarian capabilities.
5) Not the lightest laptop.
6) MacOS.
7) Overpriced.
My only problem with my notebooks that cost 1/4 of an Apple notebook is that when they are older the SW may be to demanding, but they still work as intended if you are using it for the spec it was made at that time.
Apple has viruses. Plenty of them. . Not had one myself since 2010. I have not run into BSOD since XP. All electronics glitch every so often since it's such a broad word. No OS is that hard to use. It's not the 90s anymore
The Air is overpriced to hell and back. My laptop is just what you describe for significantly cheaper except for being a bit heavier. I don't even know what a blue screen of death is. I found Windows 10 in the last few years to be extremely easy to use. Windows 11 is useless.
What are you talking about lol
Apple has viruses and crashes (just not showing a blue screen when it happens)... There is literally no difference.
Well, there is one, Windows PCs are being used by 90x times more people, so yeah issues are surfacing a bit more than the few users using a Mac to do little to nothing with it other than browsing the web...
Spicy lol
The people claiming how much Apple computers are so much better are killing me. I always have very high end rig for PC (right now i9-13900k/RTX4090/etc) and I also have 2 Macbook Pro (M1 Pro). And the majority of Apple defenders really do not understand several things:
-
Macbook or Air, are GREAT computers, nobody is saying otherwise but they are not godlike machine that are better than PC. If you pay the same price for a PC (laptop) you can get a Surface or something similar with the same build quality. they seem to always forget that they are comparing a machine that cost 2000$+ with an entry PC and then pretend that Apple are so much better... Well yah, if you pay more, you get something better... That's not an Apple exclusive.
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Mac crashes as much as Windows PC and have viruses, end of story.
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Then Mac is NOWHERE close to a good PC when it comes to performance for general purpose and esp. gaming; no matter what Apple claims during their yearly cult show. Like this joke slide about how the M1 Pro/Max can almost perform as well as an RTX 3090... I mean first of all it is at very low power consumption (again people tend to forget that), second the Max cost a TRUCKLOAD of money... People has to stop pretending that. At LOW power cons. the Macbook is amazing and unbeatable, but that's it...
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Another thing people on the social medias right now is that Game Toolkit from Apple that can actually run Direct X 12 games on Mac with a translation layer. They look at that and believe that Mac are going to run those games on tomorrow... I mean at BEST, the game runs slightly slower than an RTX 3070 and this when using the best possible M1 MAX that cost a whooping 4000$+ to start with... (and that's the "entry" level price)... I mean come on...
Stop this BS with Apple
Disagree. I use the S daily and it's just fine. Sure, I bet developers don't prefer having two power levels to target. But, it's better than PC games having to target all the way from an i9/4090 all the way down to a SteamDeck. It's also better than Sony still selling new PS4 units, more than 2.5 years after the launch of the new generation.
The SteamDeck and the PS4 are bigger industry bottlenecks than the Series S.
PC games don't have to target anything they don't want to that's kind of the issue developers are having. You can release a PC gaming and have it only work on high-end PCs and no one will stop you from doing that. Xbox requires all games to work for both the X/S and there was an article with a dev claiming that developers have tried to get MS to remove this requirement.
That's standard behaviour for the console industry. Same as how games aren't allowed to just target the One X (and better), or just the PS4 Pro (and better).
And PC games can just target whatever PC they want in theory, but in practice they incredibly rarely do. And the strong sales of the SteamDeck, and the huge install base of lower spec PCs, all but guarantee that it will continue to be a rarity.
And Sony's decision to keep manufacturing and selling the PS4 has contributed to keeping it relevant for longer. I think that's a much bigger bottleneck than the Series S, and its lasted 2.7 years into this gen and counting.
The point is devs aren't required to support anything they don't want to. Whether they will or not is up to them.
Sure the PS4 is a bigger bottle neck. The difference here is that devs aren't required to support it. Notice how BG3 isn't being delayed on the PS5 because of the PS4. While on Xbox that's exactly what's happening.
I have yet to read anything that conclusively explains that that's exactly what'a happening.
I'm also not sure why they can't just have that mode only on Series X. I think that's allowed, isn't it? I'm not aware of any requirement for the Series S and X versions to be feature identical. In fact, they rarely are; sometimes the Series S will have a single (usually "balanced") mode, where the Series X will often have some combination of performance, balanced, and quality. Ray-tracing modes are also sometimes only available on Series X.
So is this an actual restriction from Microsoft (no game modes exclusive to just the Series X), or is this the developer preferring not to ship a game without this mode on Series S? That's an interesting question that I don't know the answer to.
Your fundamental point is accurate that devs aren't required to support lower spec PCs or the PS4. But my point is equally accurate that for the first 2.7 years of this generation, they mostly have. So it's choose your poison I suppose, a lower spec that you have to support, or an EVEN lower spec that you're likely going to choose to support because the sales figures dictate it.
Why? The Series S is a great machine.
PCs also have low tiers.
This console exists to fuck up devs lifes even more. Should never be existed
As opposed to what? Continuing to sell the PS4? Microsoft immediately retired the Xbox One in favour of the Series S, but Sony continues to sell the PS4 (2.5 years into this gen and counting, making it harder for developers to end cross-gen support). The Series S is the new architecture and SSDs, vs. the PS4 being ancient architecture and an HDD.
I think Sony's the one who took the "L" here, not Microsoft.
And supporting the Series S is likely easier than trying to scale a high-spec PC game down to the SteamDeck.
And let's not even talk about cross-porting to the Switch!
