Xbox One S Theoretically Supports Native 4K Games

Microsoft’s Xbox One S seems to be a bit more powerful than the standard Xbox One console – the GPU saw a bump up, and the eSRAM seems an according increase in its bandwidth – so maybe it should come as no surprise that games on the system can look and perform a bit better than their counterparts on the original Xbox One systems, too.

Although Microsoft maintains that the spec increase in Xbox One S is marginal, and mostly for video playback support at UHD, HDR, and 4K resolutions, Microsoft’s Albert Panello revealed that developers also have the option to run a game at native 4K resolutions on the Xbox One S, should they wish to.

“If they want to [run at 4K], they can. As you said, if a developer had a game that could use it we are enabling 4K framebuffers, but only on Xbox One S consoles,” Albert Penello, senior director of product marketing and planning at Microsoft, told Digital Foundry.

So, it sounds like the Xbox One S is a decent incremental bump for the console and its specs, as opposed to being just a simple slimmer, aesthetic revision of the console.