Remedy Explains Issues Developing Alan Wake 2 for Xbox Series S - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 02 November 2023 / 11,590 Views
Remedy Entertainment recently revealed the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of Alan Wake 2 will have a Performance mode, however, the Xbox Series S version will not.
The communications director Thomas Puha at the studio speaking with IGN has explained some of the issues they had developing Alan Wake 2 for the Xbox Series S.
"Series S, the CPU is pretty much the same as on Series X,” Puha said. "But the GPU is an issue. It really is. And then, having less memory is a pretty big problem. And we often get, ‘okay, you make PC games, surely you know how to scale.’ Well, memory is not a problem on PC. It really isn’t. And that’s one of the struggles when you talk about resolution and framerate. It’s just not enough to drop the resolution heavily. That’s what we’re doing on the S and we’re really, really working hard to make sure the visual quality still holds up.
"People accept that on a weaker PC the visuals are not going to be as good and your framerate’s not going to be as good. There’s a massive difference on Series S and Series X GPU. And sure, people can mention this game did this so well and all that, and every game is different, and every developer is different. But you can’t have the best of both worlds. You gotta choose where you’re gonna focus.
"The Series S is $250 and X and PS5 are $500-600. Obviously there’s a massive difference between the power you are getting, right? It’s a lot easier to scale on the PC because of memory, and it’s not like there’s one super PC and one weaker PC. There are like 300 PC configurations in-between, and trust me that’s a massive struggle, but we’ve shipped a lot of PC games so we’re a bit better about that.
"We’ve really worked hard on getting S to run at a solid 30 and tried to maintain a good visual quality. But if you want to see the game at its best in full next-gen glory, it’s going to be on the machines that have the hardware grunt to enable that."
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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Anyone who buys a Series S isn't expecting 4k, Fully Ray traced worlds at 60/120fps.
Make all the cutbacks you need, it's a cheap low-end entry point to console gaming.
That isn't what MS promissed though.
Yeah I think both are true. Series S purchasers probably don't care too much about parity and just want a similar experience accepting a few cutbacks...
At the same time Microsoft's promise was the same game, just lower resolution. They may be in a minority but I'm sure a portion of Series S owners bought it with this intention of just sacrificing 4k, not knowing they had to also give up of 60fps modes, Raytraycing options, in a rare case even splitscreen etc.
And sure things change with time, but the Series S drawbacks were obvious from release but MS dismissed them and midia helped on it.
Yeah the no 60 fps I can't understand. It's a joke really. If the game is running at 1080p. What's their excuse?
exactly!
Where did Microsoft promised 4k with the Series S?
And as far as the 60/120FPS; if you go by that, Sony promised 8k on the Play Station 5; I do not see you complaining about broken promises on Sony side...
Here are the "official" specs:
- 1440p resolution and up to 120FPS
- Ray-Tracing (RTX) Support
-
4K (Media playback and upscaling only)
Notice the "up to" for the FPS and the "Media Playback and upscaling only". Nowhere Microsoft promised that games would be 4k and nowhere did they promise all games would run at 120FPS.
The point Pemalite is making is that nobody, in his right mind, expects the Series to go 4k/60/120FPS... Same goes for 8k for the Series X/Play Station 5. Yes, you may have one game or two actually doing that (with very little going on probably); but the consoles were never expected to do any of this from the start. Same goes for the Series S...
Consequently, there ARE games that operate at 4k on Xbox Series S.
Ori and the will of the wisps for example.
Ofcourse the game can do 4k and up to 120 fps. But then it depends on the type of game and how gpu/cpu intensive it is. U had 4k games on last gen systems, so obiously series s can and has done.
Having said that, we don't know , how far advanced devs are in using full advantages and know how of all thats possible on current gen systems. Remember covid delays affected things, so you could say we are still in the early stages of next gen. And when devs started work on the game, maybe 4/5 yrs ago, did they have the design philosophy in mind of making games like they did back then, or did they restart their game engine and designing ways to maximise the next gen console features sets and all the new ways to design games around the new cpu gpu / ssd technologies.
Do people think games on series s/x, wont be looking much better in 4 years comapred to the first games devs are putting out for "current gen systems?
It takes time and money to integrate new systems and learn new design methodology.
Isn't it? Microsoft promised a box which can provide entry-level 1440P gaming.
Obviously 1440P was a ceiling, just like the Series X/Playstation 5 have 2160P/4k as a ceiling.
It's GPU sits between the Radeon 6400XT and Radeon 6500XT... And that should have provided a realistic expectation of what to expect out of the console.
Console manufacturers make all sorts of ludicrous claims... If anyone takes a console manufacturers claims as "fact" then they haven't been paying attention over the decades. (I.E. Blast processing, Power of the Cell, Power of Cloud, PS4Pro/OneX as 4k/60 etc')
In my opinion it comes down to developer and how far they want to push them selves and new tech. I remember cerny saying how there are all these new tech in newer consoles, but it's up to the developer how much the new rich feature sets they want to learn and take advantage of, or just go about the conventional way of doing things.
They never promised 4k.
If that's your argument, then where are the 8k games on PS5? 8k is literally written on the front of the box in Gold..
The xbox one x has games in 4k, and series s is way more advanced on both cpu and gpu tech. Do you really think series s can't put out any 4k games?
Series S has some TRUE 4K games (Not upscaled) and output a native 4k image like:
- Crysis remastered. - 4k/30. (Dynamic, but hits 4k more often than Series X)
- Ori and the Will of the Wisps. - 4k/60.
- The Touryst. - 4k/60.
- Hades. - 4k/60.
-
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition. - 4k/30.
And then you have games that will be sub 4k and are upscaled to 4k like The Falconeer @ 1800P on Series S.
However the vast majority of Series S titles will be 720P-1080P-1440P or somewhere in between.
But it can do 4k no problem, the developer just has to build their games with that restrictive hardware in mind.
Tell us you don’t understand how hardware works without telling us you don’t understand how hardware works.
4k is done by Ram and GPU, the system is not designed to run 4k. It can do everything the X/PS5 can do at a much lower Res. If Devs spent the time, they can actually achieve alot with the S, as proven by MS 1st party.
S uses the same CPU, SSD, Architecture, APU as the X. Its no different to a 3060 and a 3080. The 3060 does everything the 3080 does with lower settings and resolution. That's the difference between X and S. Low end GPU vs Mid Range GPU.
Companies should stop making excuses for inferior Series S versions. There is no need to explain themselves.
You get what you pay for and if consumers decide to cheap out on the hardware they should accept that they won't get the most premium experience. Full stop!
Jedi Survivor has no 60 fps modes as well, this will keep happening.
Just don't develop for Xbox, the games hardly sell anyway...
I though resoultion and ray tracing is what took a huge chunk of the gpu power. Can't they do the same game just at 1080p, without the ray tracing?
If Xbox goes for 2 consoles again next gen, they need to make sure the weaker one has 1/2 the GPU power instead of 1/3rd, and the same amount of RAM (just running at a lower speed).
Well, for me, when I game on the Xbox platform, it's Gamepass and lately, mostly cloud. I can download the games if I want to, but it's SO much more of a pain that I find myself not doing it. Even with the hiccups, the occasional wait times and the slight lag... being able to play stuff nearly instantly... it's just too convenient and effortless. So, hardware strength doesn't really apply for me. I could play this stuff on my old Xbox One and get by lol.
Some places had massive wait lines for Cloud version during Starfield launch. So downloading and playing on your Series S or X seems like a much better option. But well I don't really like streaming =p
Yes. There were long. One time, it said 20 minutes. I was like, nope. Came back on past midnight and got in in a minute or two.
They (MS) definitely need to up their game there if they want streaming to take off.
This is what happens when a "communications director" talks about things he has no idea about. What he says here about RAM is absolute nonsense. Don't believe him and forget it. Next time please interview one of the developers who is responsible for the Series S version. He will tell something completely different.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/b1NwPWMDrtg
