Nice list. From what I've seen in a few games, it seems like Series S is roughly equivalent to Xbox One X in terms of GPU power and could match it like for like in resolution in most cases, but the devs seem to be doing what MS recommended they do, aiming for higher framerate and/or higher graphics settings from the PC version instead of higher resolution. It makes for a really nice cross-gen cross-section imo. We have:

Xbox One- Low graphics settings, low resolution, and frame drops on many games. Looking ready for permanent retirement honestly. I feel bad for devs that will be stuck supporting it for another 2 or 3 years.

Xbox One X- Low graphics settings, high resolution, and usually stable framerate. Still has a few years left in it I'd say.

Xbox Series S- Higher graphics settings, lower resolution, and stable framerates in most cases. Looks to be properly next-gen ready to me.

Xbox Series X- Highest graphics settings, highest resolution, and stable framerates in most launch games, with only a few exceptions. A proper next-gen beast, though it seems to be held back by an SDK that wasn't quite ready for launch, which is resulting in some optimization issues for some devs. SDK problems should be remedied by early 2021 hopefully.

Considering even their 1st party content is 1080p, yeah. But less demanding games are hitting 1440p, 1800p and even 4K. So maybe the goal was telling people this isn't just a 1080p box.

I auppose they could achieve 1440p with compromised visual settongs or capping games at 30 fps. I rather have 1080p though.

AC:Valhalla could probably be 60 fps on Series S with dynamic 1080p. Shame its not an option because performance does demonstrate a generational leap.

To get a meaningful reduction in price you have to lower the specs a fair chunk. You can't really save the money on the box, cables, controllers, PSU, shipping, etc...

Ultimately though the games will be the same to play. They will just look "last-gen" in places where the scene gets busy.

Yep, the Series S will hold back innovation, especially due to it's lower RAM. It will be the same as One X to One, thus the Series gen is really a 8 GB RAM / 4 tf generation with the pro (higher res) console available at launch. It will be interesting to see what effect it will have on multiplats after the transition period and if ps5 exclusives will pull ahead in terms of innovation (already do with duel sense I guess)

Not that there won't be a difference with last gen, faster CPU, faster RAM, faster GPU, SSD, it just won't fully utilize the Series X GPU apart from (imo) useless native 4K and 120 fps. All for short term gratification. Or perhaps MS wants to take Apple's path, release upgrades more regularly and quietly drop support / no guarantees for older hw versions. (Or you can still stream the game)

Anyway already at 1080p at launch instead of 1440p on many titles that aren't even next gen games. 900p and 720p will be back.

1. The Series S has less RAM, but its also going to use less RAM than PS5 and Series X by having lower quality assets and resolution, these two things combined can account for a significant amount of RAM. So the impact of less RAM isn't quite certain yet.

2. One X wasn't designed to innovate. The additional RAM helped with resolution and higher quality assets when developers opted to put them in.

3. Series X and PS5 are generally going to target 1440p+ and maybe 60 fps. With that said, Series S could opt for dynamic 1080p, lower graphics settings and even 30 fps if necessary. AC:Valhalla opted for reduced resolution and performance to maintain 9th gen visuals. Meanwhile DMC5 just disabled RT for Series S, while Watch Dogs compromised resolution with RT. There are many options developers have, kinda like when tweaking a PC game's settings.

Ram also puts a limit on world size and how dynamic/interactive a world can be. That's where the innovation is that will be held back by the the existence of a console with less memory. For example Minecraft, it works on everything, but not the full fat unlimited world experience. Different editions all have different limits on number of active 'actors' and world size. Fine for different systems, yet here game play parity is assumed to be a must.

You can't solve everything with lower resolution and assets and the fact remains, 8GB is zero progress from the current gen. XBox One had 6GB of RAM available to games (started as 5GB, got an extra GB to use later), Series S has 8GB available for games (or 7.5GB, some sources say the OS uses 2.5GB) so there is some more room. However https://gamingbolt.com/xbox-series-s-ram-is-a-major-issue-several-devs-speak-out-about-memory-bottleneck

16GB is already too little of a generational 'leap' imo. This gen should have had 24 GB total if it's going to last for another 7 or 8 years. 16GB is enough for higher assets and higher resolution, leaves very little for more complex dynamic evolving worlds.

My hope is developers can make good use of the SSD to expand working memory, like FS2020 can run on my 16GB laptop thanks to a 20GB pagefile on SSD. When the pagefile was on my hdd I went down to 2fps and total lock ups, oopsie. It still stutters, the game prefers 32GB system ram, but only crashes once every other day now after disabling the HDD pagefile, forcing windows to only use the SSD.

Ram also puts a limit on world size and how dynamic/interactive a world can be. That's where the innovation is that will be held back by the the existence of a console with less memory. For example Minecraft, it works on everything, but not the full fat unlimited world experience. Different editions all have different limits on number of active 'actors' and world size. Fine for different systems, yet here game play parity is assumed to be a must.

You can't solve everything with lower resolution and assets and the fact remains, 8GB is zero progress from the current gen. XBox One had 6GB of RAM available to games (started as 5GB, got an extra GB to use later), Series S has 8GB available for games (or 7.5GB, some sources say the OS uses 2.5GB) so there is some more room. However https://gamingbolt.com/xbox-series-s-ram-is-a-major-issue-several-devs-speak-out-about-memory-bottleneck

16GB is already too little of a generational 'leap' imo. This gen should have had 24 GB total if it's going to last for another 7 or 8 years. 16GB is enough for higher assets and higher resolution, leaves very little for more complex dynamic evolving worlds.

My hope is developers can make good use of the SSD to expand working memory, like FS2020 can run on my 16GB laptop thanks to a 20GB pagefile on SSD. When the pagefile was on my hdd I went down to 2fps and total lock ups, oopsie. It still stutters, the game prefers 32GB system ram, but only crashes once every other day now after disabling the HDD pagefile, forcing windows to only use the SSD.

We need to look towards the PC as an example of how games scale with resolution and memory capacity...
And a good example of that is actually Doom Eternal.

At 1080P Ultra settings (The Series S will likely target Medium in the real world, let's be honest.) Doom Eternal will gobble up 5.230GB of Ram on the Graphics Card.
Bump that resolution up to 2160P/4k and that same game pushes it to 6.025GB of Ram used... That is a 15.2% increase in Ram usage accompanying the 300% increase in resolution.

Thus we can surmise that resolution alone has a negligible impact on memory consumption, it's there... But not a day and night difference.

But if you were to run Doom Eternal at 1080P Medium it will only use 3.500GB of Ram... That is a reduction of 66.9% in memory consumption by lowering detail settings... And that memory consumption discrepancy falls in line with the memory differences between the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X.
Texture Resolution accounts for a *massive* amount of Ram consumption irrespective of resolution... And that is what will happen with the Series S.

On the resolution side of the equation... Resolution is only one aspect of the graphics presentation of a game... And one that I would argue is actually becoming less important with each successive console generation thanks to new post-process effects and frame reconstruction methods, granted I would prefer the full fat native resolution of my displays being met by the gaming hardware.

So whilst yes... Massive Ram limitations can have ramifications to things like world size, developers will likely cut back on things like texturing first and rely on the SSD as a "scratch pad" to retain world sizes.

I hear ya, but what I am saying is the first compromises Series S would have to make is lowering asset quality and resolution. RDR2 on PC for example uses about 3-4GB more VRAM when in ultra vs low settings. Then lowering resolution can save about 1GB depending how low the resolution goes. My numbers might not be entirely accurate by the way.

Anyway, I am suggesting developers don't have to build for Series S' 8GB per se. You have to consider 9th gen games are already using many GB on textures, certainly more then 8th gen did.

Hence, the Series S will probably have texture quality that resembles 8th gen when memory is being pushed. While Series X and PS5 are expected to go well beyond that.

Now I am not arguing Series S memory will never be a problem. I am only arguing higher end machines will use more RAM just on visual polish. Some Series S games are considerably smaller as well because of the lower quality assets.

Minecraft is for machines that vary wildly in RAM. Vita, 3DS, PS360, X1, PS4, etc. Several platforms mentioned have less than 1GB of RAM. So not a great example.

World complexity also depends on how efficiently menory is used. I mean 7th gen games like Skyrim and GTA5 have impressive worlds using a fraction of memory 8th gen has.

I am a tad confused how much memory 8th gen consoles used. I've read PS4 used 4.5GB. X1 used 5GB, maybe a little more. Eitherway, multiplat games were bulit for whatever PS4 had. So saying 8GB is zero progress is incorrect. Series S still has several GB more along with SSD to stream data quickly.

So I agree that memory could be an issue, I think there should have been less compromise. But I am also considering Series X and PS5 are expected to use considerably more RAM just on visuals. Maybe the SSD could also help in some cases.