1967

Yeah but what about content? There’s a dearth of 4k stuff as it is.

1968

8K is about 33 million pixels.

I pity the graphics card that tries to power that at 30 fps.

1969

Seems like the only real content would be… the XBox and the PS5.

The thing is though, as Kall’s bit points out… there’s a point where you literally can’t see any more pixels. 8k seems absurd.

1970

I hadn’t seen anyone talking about 8k for the new consoles. It’s only come up because NVidia needed something to claim the 3090 could do… Even there it was running DLSS.

1971

The more i think about the Xbox S the more it seems an odd duck to me. Taking AC Odyssey, the Xbox One X regularly got between 2700 x whatever and 4K resolutions with 6 tflops of graphics power. What were being told now is that that Xbox S would run the game at 1080P? or 1440P? at a higher frame rate? Even the PS4 Pro had the same graphics performance (raw) as the Xbox S… but would run the game at a higher resolution. So, effectively, the Xbox S would be running the game at a lower resolution than the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X to get higher framerates?

It’s just not clear what the target resolution is. I still say that 1080p will feel like a big step down to any modern gamer used to modern consoles, but 1440p won’t be as noticeable.

I guess what the Xbox S seems to not be for consumers that already own a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X? What are the advantages, if any, for such a consumer to “side grade” to it? SSD loading times, ray tracing? Anything else? Is downgrading the resolution for a higher framerate actually a good thing?

Having AC Valhalla come out on all the platforms will give a pretty good comparison baseline, whatever the theory.

1972

How? That’s the resolution my screen is at. Sure, supersampling might yield marginal improvements, but makes no difference to me if it’s 1080p or 1440p as long as the framerate is solid, load times are minimal, it supports the more CPU intensive worlds of the new gen, … Does that make me not a modern gamer because my TV is not 4K?

EDIT: That said, I might wait a few months for more games to come out. My One X will not be obsolete that soon. So gives me more time to find good offers on the series X. But I don’t think the resolution is that much of an issue.

1973

What I mean more specifically is that the Xbox S has basically the same graphics performance of the PS4 Pro and less than the Xbox One X. So you’re saying that the Xbox S is actually meant for gamers with 1080p screens only?

More directly, what reason to upgrade does the S offer a current PS4 Pro or Xbox One X owner? Lower locked resolutions for higher framerates?

It just seems like current PS4 Pro or Xbox One X owners shouldn’t get an Xbox S, in a nutshell.

1974

You seem to be completely discounting the role of CPU and storage in games that weren’t built for the current gen.

1975

If you invested in a One X, not much. You bought the top of the line of the previous gen. You are more likely looking at Series X.

I don’t think that makes the series S an odd duck. And remember it will very much become an upgrade path for games that start requiring the increased CPU power (and faster storage) to be playable (i.e. the next gen only games). But it’s obviously more of an upgrade path for the One S series. And also for new gamers who are attracted by GamePass. It’s such a cheap next gen entry point into the GamePass world.

Your comment on “modern gamers” slightly confused me though.

1976

That’s pretty much what i was saying - the Xbox S doesn’t really offer current PS4 Pro or Xbox One X owners a big reason to upgrade - yes, they’ll be some improvements, but are faster loading times worth $300~ for them?

The modern gamer was really just “up to date” gamers used to current gen hardware, and not using older consoles/PCs. Obviously if you’re still using a PS3 the Xbox S will be a giant leap forward and you’ll notice it a lot. Likewise, Switch only gamers won’t pine away for higher resolutions they lost sidegrading to the Xbox S.

But like i said there will be plenty of Valhalla videos comparing the new and older consoles framerates and resolutions soon enough.

1977

Right now, basically nothing (except access to Game Pass if you’re coming from PS4). In a couple years, being able to play new games.

Bear in mind, it’s considerably cheaper than the XboneX was (partly offset by having less storage). There’s no particular reason to expect it to be much of an upgrade.

1978

You started with this statement and concluded that Series S was a weird upgrade for One X owners…

I don’t think anybody said XBox One X users had to upgrade to it when both consoles launch at the same time (and their One X will likely serve them well past the end of the year). I think it’s pretty obvious which Series X|S console targets which market segment. But yes, the CPU and storage are still the differentiation down the line, even if not the obvious upgrade path.

That said, thanks for clarifying your meaning.

1979

People obsess way too much on the GPU over other components.

People keep comparing hardware with different and more advanced architectures to each other using vastly overused metrics like teraflop ratings.

People keep ignoring the vast differences in capabilities of development teams when trying to point out how game X ran at this performance/resolution level on console Y and therefore I will extrapolate that to a system that isn’t even out yet.

1980

Teraflops are indeed bullshit but the GPU performance is supremely important to gaming.

1981

I mean sure that’s true - but what then is the measure of comparison between systems? It’s not going to be some kind of abstract “experience” thing - there’s framerates and display resolutions, as well as graphical texture details, draw distances, ect. All these things are measurable.

1982

So is the CPU and I/O. Those are almost always ignored in these pissing matches. This thread is an endless back and forth almost exclusively about the GPU.

1983

I mean that’s fine that the CPU is much faster - but it has to translate to actual measurable performance differences.

What’s the performance, do you guess, going to be like with all the iterations of Valhalla between the different consoles?

Eventually new games will be more CPU intensive in ways that older games aren’t - but since MS has pledged to keep the old machines going, their much weaker CPUs are going to be the bottleneck for game design for the foreseeable future. So we’re unlikely have a “sea change” in CPU heavy game design for a couple years at least.

1984

Valhalla might not be a good point of comparison. Remember, we just had 7 years where games are being designed with a really weak CPU and strong GPU in mind, because that’s what PS4 and XB1 had. Valhalla is also designed that way, even though it will no doubt have some extra bells and whistles for next-gen consoles. I doubt we’ll be seeing games that take full advantage of the CPU for a bit. Or maybe we will in Sony exclusives for PS5.

But yeah, I agree, Valhalla will be an interesting point of comparison anyway, just because it will be on everything, last gen and medium gen and next gen.

1985

Not really. Games don’t stress the CPU much and developers work around I/O constraints. They can of course bottleneck performance but historically have been much easier to address than GPU performance.

Faster CPUs and disks won’t make a big difference in moment to moment gameplay. Levels will load faster or even stream with no loading at all after the first one, which will be great.

CPU constrained games will run at higher framerates, but even next gen consoles don’t have GPUs capable of real 4k without compromises on quality or framerates without tricks like checkerboard rendering or DLSS so they’re unlikely to be substantially CPU constrained.

1986

You forgot… “on Xbox” at the end there.

PS5 arrives in one form. Period. You’re getting all the benefits whether you buy your games on disc or digital. This is why splitting your console base is dumb. At some point people will want their Series X to do Series X things and if you bought one of the Series S machines you’re going to get left behind… or you won’t, and all the Xbox games will be hamstrung by catering to Lowest Common Denominator designs.

That’s how it has always worked. Why people think this will somehow be different now that it’s Microsoft or something is beyond me.