Quaro
1827
The CPU and the SSD in the Series S are bigger generational leaps from last gen then the GPU is in the Series X. The Series S is definitely next gen.
The only potential hangup is the 10 gigs of memory. It’s possible that some more unique or experimental games use the memory for something other than textures. In that case, the S might hold back the X a little and be annoying to support.
TimJames
1828
Yeah I guess most kids have probably been playing Fortnite at 120 FPS for a while now.
stusser
1829
I don’t care about 4k, but it’s great to start seeing FPS taken seriously in console-land. No more 30fps garbage, please!
Rock8man
1830
DiRT 5 is the 4K 120fps game I’m looking forward to at launch. I’ve never played a DiRT game at 60fps even, let alone 120, so it will be interesting to see how it feels to play. The other two that have been announced at 120 that I’m looking forward to are Gears 5 and Ori and the Will of the Wisp. In both of those, I get fps in the 30s on my PC, and they’re both so gorgeous. So I’m looking forward to seeing how those two feel at 120fps.
I’m guessing we’ll see less and less of 120fps going forward though, as more developers put in smaller ray tracing features or other visual upgrades. Which is kind of a shame. I think the visual fidelity in the above 3 games is already very good. I hope more developers go for higher framerate options.
Dirt 5 has a 120FPS mode but its not at 4K. It will be 1440 /w DRS or 1080p.
Rock8man
1832
Ah, that makes sense. Not that I had the ability to see it that way anyway. You need a TV with HDMI 2.1 to see 4K 120 Hz, which most TVs don’t have. The hand-me-down 4K LED TV I’ll be getting soon is from 2016, so it certainly does not. The TV itself is good at scaling SD and HD content though. So 120Hz gameplay is what I want to see, bottom line.
Paul_cze
1833
And that TV has the ability to display 120hz?
Rock8man
1834
It does, yes. That was quite common for LED TVs. Remember it’s not OLED, it’s an IPS display.
TimJames
1835
I don’t care about 4K either, and 60 is usually sufficient on a console anyway. I just hope that raising the ceiling will encourage developers to raise the floor as well.
We already know they’re still targeting 30. Hopefully on aggregate that happens less often now.
Timex
1836
This is the thing… if the XbxS can play games at 60fps at 1080p, then that’s probably good enough for me.
JD
1837
Some more photos here for comparison.
I’ve been playing around with a nonfunctional Xbox Series S this week, and I’m genuinely surprised Microsoft has managed to fit the same Xbox Series X CPU and lots of other next-gen technology into something that uses space and wealth so economically.
I think FPS targets are going to continue being set by what audiences will tolerate. 30 FPS will remain just fine for a lot of games/genres for a lot of people, so developers are going to keep targeting that in those cases. Obviously twitchy FPS and racing games and VR and things like that will probably trend toward higher targets, because that’s what the audience for those games appreciates. But there won’t be consumer outrage if the base consoles run the next Assassins Creed at 30 FPS, so that’s probably going to keep happening.
TimJames
1839
Right, and changing the ceiling might change consumer preferences. We’ll see.
Again, I’m probably thinking about this in too much of an old fashioned way since I suspect a lot of kids have gaming PCs already.
I think the question is, how much of the current batch of 30fps console games are 30fps because of GPU vs CPU bottlenecking?
Since consoles will finally have a desktop grade CPU maybe FPS will be higher in the average case?
stusser
1841
Well most of them have PC ports, but I don’t think anyone is gaming on CPUs remotely comparable to current-gen consoles. My guess is most console games are GPU limited, but it’s tough to substantiate that.
I beg your apology as this seems to be a stupid question the moment I’m asking it… well here it is: Are FPS hard-coded? Meaning, if I get one of the new Xboxes will Forza 3/4 still run like slow motion? (30fps it looks to me). I am PC only actually but I bought an Xbox One S for 99€ when we moved to a new city (without our stuff) due to work. I kinda like consoles I figured. But a bit more horsepower and a SSD seem very much needed. So if some of the older games would run better, well, I’d be in for a new Xbox (Hello Game Pass!). But yesterday I fired up the first Fable and it ran like shit too. So I guess FPS are hard-coded? Unless it’s a game labeled ‘optimized for…’ - that might run better?
Not a stupid question, it depends on the game. Some have locked frame rates or caps on the frame rate (it can sometimes be more unpleasant to have a frame rate that varies dramatically than a fixed frame rate, even if the frame rate could be higher in some areas if unlocked). Others are unlocked or have that as a graphical option the user can select.
There are also more complex ways that the game logic and other calculations can be tied to frame rates which would mean locking the frame rates because otherwise higher frame rates could throw off the timing or functionality of other gameplay things.
Rock8man
1844
On Forza Horizon 4:
Forza Horizon 4 already is optimized for Xbox One X as well. It has two modes: you can run in 4K and 30fps, or alternatively, you can run in performance mode where it runs at 60fps.
They have announced an optimized update will come out for Series X that will run at 4K 60fps. So you get both.
On Series X they announced this:
It makes me wonder what they’ll do for Series S. Will it have the same two options as Xbox One X? Either 4K or 60fps, pick one?
DaveLong
1845
What the two people above me already said, plus the fact that Xbox One S was already underpowered in 2013 when it first shipped. A solid 30 fps in many games wasn’t always a sure thing and 60 was really pushing it in almost everything.
Probably 1440/30 and 1080/60 modes for the Series S.
