My guess is that if a Series S does exist, Microsoft has done enough calculations to know what level specs will provide parity between the two new consoles. With a Zen 2 8 core cpu, RDNA 2 gpu and the same ssd that's in the Series X, Lockhart would be more than capable enough of delivering 1440p games with lower fidelity than Series X.

I think for consoles wouldn't as useful to have 1440p unless it makes upscaling better/easier. More probably that it have 1080p with internal upscaler for 4k TVs and for most people that will seem great.

Gotta stop pushing the same narrative despite admitting you know nothing concrete. Nobody is buying the “concern” you are displaying. 

Project Mara looks new and gorgeous. And this is before MS June E3 style digital event. I wouldn’t worry, we fine.  

⚠️ WARNING: Was told not to respond to Goopy for 30 Days.

I don't subscribe to the what is an accetpable resolution logic. I feel 1080p is a sweet spot, but not crucial. Especially when the post processing effects and image reconstruction tech is improving the overall presentation.

Games like Doom Eternal and Fornite are hitting "unacceptable resolutions" on base X1. But these are also games using some of the best 8th gen options for improving the overall presentation.

Ideally Series S would push out assets and effects more demanding than RDR2. That will generally come at a compromise of resolution naturally.

Basically my feelings about resolution has kinda changed with all these new options developers have. Even old 1080p games from this gen can look bad due to poor post processing effects.

I believe its best if developers look at their options versus a 1080p requirement. Shadow of the Tomb Raider opted for 900p on X1 because they pushed effects instead. The end result looks better than a 1080p Rise of the Tomb Raider on X1.

But again, I think many games will target 1080p and higher on Series S. Series S may even have a lot of 4K content when it comes BC and less demanding titles.

No, there are many games on X1 hitting 1080p. Many AAA games often settle with 900p. Games locked at 720p is a small list. There are many games with dynamic resolutions that drop to 720p, but PS4 has some of that too.

Agreed, a vast majority of 8th gen gamers are using base specs. So people content with that aren't gonna mind similar resolutions on Series S. And like I said before, a great looking 1080p game like God of War can look more impressive than a 4K game. Therefore the number of pixels isn't necessarily as important as the actual graphics.

I'm confused by your Halo 4/5 comment. Halo 4 is 720p on 360, 1080p on X1. Halo 5 is a dynamic resolution that jumps from about 800p to 1080p.

Again, PS5 could do 4K/60 fps and God of War and still have a lot of power to spare. Gears 5 does 4K/60 fps with room to spare for the highly demanding ultra settings. Developers also have the option of making AAA games at 4K/30 fps, 1440p/60 fps, but they don't have to drop down to 1440p/30 fps unless its a really demanding game visually.

RDR1 was well optimized on 360, likely the lead platform. The PS3 version was 640p and ran worse. RDR2 was not the lead platform on X1, feels like they just settled with 800p considering PS4 is doing 1080p.

Look, we can argue about resolutions all day, but the fact remains that resolution isn't that big a deal for the average console gamer. Most people watch 1080p content all day and can hardly tell the difference between a 1080p or a 4k movie on a 55inch tv. If a game looks great, nobody is going to sit right in front of their tv and say "wait a minute, this is not even 4k!" and feel like they're getting a lackluster experience. 

The real question is how ambitious next gen games will still be if they're designed to run on a 4Tflops Series S and the Xone. Also, if we're talking about parity, what will developers be able to use those extra 8 Tflops for on Series X? My point is that they wouldn't be able to use it for anything except resolution, fps and a bump in graphics settings. Not the things that actually matter like larger/ richer levels, ai, physics, world simulations etc.

Having cheap options might sounds great, but it does come with a major trade off. The worst thing that could happen is if 3rd party developers would start using Series S as the lowest common denominator, limiting their ambitions across all platforms. I'm sure games would still look better than what we're seeing today, but it simply would be a much smaller leap than what it could have been without Series S.  

Surely if Lockheart has the same superfast SSD as Series X rest of the specs won't matter much?

We will see, but the gpu is pretty much the last thing you want console manufacturers to cheap out on. 

Agree with your first paragragh. But your previous comments about X1 resolutions was mostly wrong.

The ambition of future MS games isn't inherently limited by Series S or even X1. Is Doom Eternal and Witcher 3 limited by Switch? It also depends on the individual project as games can have features removed.

"larger/ richer levels, ai, physics, world simulations etc." For Series S, all of that can be maintained as that often has little to do with GPU TF. For X1, which will be supported for a period, can scale aspects back like we see on Switch ports for example.

In theory the only significant compromise Series S would make is 4TF vs 12TF. That means the S and X should support the exact same content with GPU heavy aspects being compromised for S. Whether that be performance, graphics settings and/or resolution.

Anyway, you aren't say anything new and for decades we've seen PCs games scale significantly for GPUs.

A powerful graphics card can play RDR2 at 4K/60/Ultra. A lesser card can play it well at 720p/30/Low. Either way you would be playing the exact same game. So if GPU TF is the only disparity, they can likely handle the same large scale and ambitious games.

No.

GPU power is one of the easier apects to scale a game back for. Hence, the many graphics settings found in PC games.

However, too little CPU power or RAM and a game will be a poor experience regardless of GPU power.