The Xbox Series S has been a hot topic of conversation since the moment it was revealed earlier this month (and even before that, actually)- in both good ways and bad. While the prospect of a new next-gen console launching for $299 is exciting, many developers have spoken out about its technical deficiencies and how that might impact next-gen games (though others still have leapt up in its defense).
Which of those two sides will end up being more correct than the other remains to be seen, but in the here and now, Microsoft have confirmed one very clear advantage that the Xbox Series S will have because of its lower-end hardware.
Speaking to IGN, Xbox director of program management Jason Ronald confirmed that game sizes on the Xbox Series S will be approximately 30% smaller than on the Xbox Series X, thanks to the former targeting 1440p resolutions instead of 4K.
Ronald also added that the tech is in place for developers to choose which assets of a game they want to install in order to reduce its size, but whether or not that happens is entirely up to the developers themselves- so this isn’t exactly a guarantee for every single game that will come to the Xbox Series S.
“With a performance target of 1440p at 60 fps, our expectation is that developers will not ship their highest level mipmaps to Xbox Series S, which will reduce the size of the games,” Ronald said. “Ultimately the controls [are] in the developer’s hands. We’ve had this technology for a while that allows developers to intelligently choose which assets to install on which device they’re playing on. So the flexibility is in the developers’ hands to make sure the right assets are there.”
One of the areas where the Xbox Series S is lagging behind its big brother is its storage capacity, offering just 512 GB of space with its SSD. Though it’s still looking like a rather small number by next-gen standard (hell, even by current-gen standards), this will hopefully help out with that a tad bit.
Of course, that depends on whether developers actually make use of this tech Ronald is talking about, so… here’s hoping.
