S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 Dev Believes Any Game Can Reach the Xbox Series S Memory Limits - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 04 November 2024 / 2,735 Views
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl developer GSC Game World in an interview with Windows Central stated the team first thought it would be impossible to get the game to run an Xbox Series S. However, after optimization they believe it is possible for any game to run on the Xbox Series S despite the memory limits.
"At first, we thought bringing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 to the Xbox Series S might be impossible," said the developer. "We have such a big game with so many mechanics, a huge amount of things. It felt like this must be impossible to do. But then we start optimizing, adding new features for streaming information. Unreal Engine has a lot of features for this, but for our game, we really had to squeeze up every megabyte from every piece of system content we could, and now we did it.
"After this experience, I believe it's possible for any game to reach the Xbox Series S' memory limits. And yes, not every developer, every studio has the opportunity, or the additional time to optimize for the Xbox Series S. We had to boost our expertise on the optimization side, which also helped the PC build, making it a lot more performant. We have quite low minimum PC requirements for a modern game."
GSC Game World did reveal the game runs at 60 frames per second (FPS) on the Xbox Series X with some dips to around 55 FPS, while the game sticks to 30 FPS on the Xbox Series S.
"The game runs at 60 frames per second on Xbox Series X, there are some times when it might dip to 55 or so, but hopefully we can optimize further there before or after release," said the developer. "We allow bigger drops in narrative cutscenes that are full of complexity and VFX and the like, since it won't impact the player's movement experience.
"On the Xbox Series S, we stick to 30 FPS. However, in many cases, we have managed to hit 60 FPS, but it's not as consistent as the Series X. But we're looking to get a performance mode for Xbox Series S, to get it to 60 FPS. We think it's possible."
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl will launch for the Xbox Series X|S, PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG, and Xbox Game Pass on November 20.
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 obvious...
There is a trade off, but at the end of the day, PC games has been doing this since 30 years...
Yea it was so obvious that a professional developer even thought it would be impossible at first. This guys a dev and has experience in the field and he even thought it would be impossible.
Stop comparing the XBSS to low spec PC. PC's have system memory + the VRAM on the video card, so memory has never been a big issue in the PC space compared to console space.
No, I will still compare it to a low-spec PC. There are many ways to make your game run on a lower memory device, such as reducing texture sizes (which is mostly what is done on the Series S).
Stalker 2 and other games are proving that. Flight Simulator 2020 runs on the Series S. So yes, you can downscale many things, including memory usage. And yes, PC has been proving that for a while now.
Memory has never been an issue on a low spec PC ? :) Seriously, where did you get that from?... I do not think you ever used a low specs PC for gaming...
At the end, everything is about tradeoffs, simple as that.
I always like to say; any game can run on any system.
It is just a matter of
... if you want 60 frames per second, or
... if you want 60 seconds per frame
all games will eventually fall somewhere in between these ranges.
Exactly, it is about tradeoffs.
Sure I think it's possible if you spend a massive amount of time on it. Is that really a good idea though when you have gaming budgets skyrocketing and you're doing all this for the lowest population in the ecosystem? Just doesn't seem like a smart use of resources.
Hopefully MS will take the Series S as a learning lesson and apply it for future generations. They had the right idea with 2 out of the 3 aspects: keep the CPU performance the same, keep the SSD performance the same, but also - keep the memory amount the same. It was only that last aspect they stumbled on. Funny thing is, if they had kept the Series S with 256-bit memory interface and 16GB of GDDR6 memory, it wouldn't actually NEED the same amount of memory bandwidth as the Series X (since we talking about a ~4TF GPU versus a ~12TF one after all). They could have used drastically slower GDDR6 memory. And at the end of the day, having 16GB of lower-cost, lower speed GDDR6 might have been nearly the same price as 10GB of higher cost, higher speed GDDR6.
Yes, while I believe it is possible and some tradeoffs has to be made, I don't think Microsoft will do the same "mistake". I'm quoting mistake because at the end, it is a very good price to get into this generation gaming. But if anything can be improved upon while keeping that low price, it is the memory.
They only just recently stopped developing games for last gen. Developing level design and and so on with the ssd in mind, is way differnt than the previous Hdd approach. This is why we haven't seen much special things come out yet this current gen.
Remember the tech talk presnetation prior to launch about the specs of the series s, and how it changes game development and allows for much greater detail at the fraction of the cost to ram cpu/gpu and so on, and how the ssd plays a big factor , along with the other tech. I think it was talk on the velocity engine.
I think going forward the next batch of exclusives will be doing more exciting things.
I mean yeah, just look at the “impossible” Switch ports like Doom Eternal, The Witcher 3, or No Man’s Sky. Anything is possible with the proper amount of development time. But like those Switch ports, it’s completely expected to be inferior to the Series X version of a game.
It’s pretty funny that there’s been notable examples, like Baldur’s Gate 3 last year and now Stalker 2, where Series S optimization work has allowed developers to discover ways to improve their game on all available platforms their games are on.
Since I am no game developer, I always feels a bit silly to say 'I agree.'
But I do believe every developer can optimize their game for Series S.
Luckily, we have guys like Digital Foundry.
So we'll see how good every game runs on PS5, X and S the developer claims (until proven) it's well optimized for. And what the differences are.
If a defining element of game isn't on the same level as it was initially planned, then I at least would raise the question if weaker hardware can be in fact weakening the vision they've once had.
But I give them that:
Optimization, no matter what game, must be key to enhance abilities to reach better results audiovisually on even more powerful hardware, too.
If R* will be able to put GTA6 on the S without sacrificing defining elements, then time & ressources are indeed the only things that'd be neccessary to support the S.
Then again, you also can't blame studios that don't have enough time & ressources. I agree on that, too.
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