The last years of the 10-13 year period mainly apply to some A/AA games and sports games which traditionally support previous gen systems for several years. This generation is expected to last too long... and if the current super slow transition is anything to go by, the next crossgen period may persist even longer due to diminishing returns and rising costs. If Series S is mandated, a lot of games will either skip Xbox Series or be extremely held back. The gap between Series S and X/PS5 is massive as is (they're effectively 3 to 5 times more powerful per real world results).

Maybe I missed something but timed exclusivity is a contract. When the contract ends, the game isn't guaranteed to hit Xbox, but the publisher regains the right to do whatever they want. It doesn't necessarily confirm that it's coming to Xbox (although it likely will).

Consoles and PC are quite similar now. PC requirements give us a decent idea how demanding a game can be on consoles. Though I'm not sure these requirements are exactly final (if they are, expect the lowest native resolutions/fps on PS5 yet). Just don't be surprised if it skips Xbox, or if the Series S version ends up in a near-unplayable state. The Medium (from the same developer that's working on Silent Hill 2 Remake) with its relatively modest minimum requirements struggled on the Series S (Resolution goes as low as 648p at 30fps). It's fair to set an expectation from this and the trailer we've seen that SH2R will be at least notably more demanding on both console and PC (assuming said minimum requirements are final and fairly accurate, which they may not be).

We're not feeling Series S's limitations yet coz the vast majority of relevant games are still crossgen, and the few that aren't also don't have nearly as high of minimum PC requirements as SH2R. The workload will decide what's viable on Series S and what isn't. It's just common sense.

My point was it's very odd to consider Series X and PS5 as running well here at max 1440p with framerate issues. Even more odd when you would only consider 1440P 30 fps as the threshold for the S to be also running well. I mean if series S achieved such target I wouldn't expect anything less than 4k@30 maybe even 4k@60 for both PS5 and X. 

I know. And my point was: it's okay to have sub-4k@60fps games, it's still better than the 1080p@30fps we got from most of the last gen games. 

But next-gen at 792p@30fps, nah.

@Permalite Procedural generation can be used to save memory, but more so on disk since you still need all that procedurally generated stuff in memory. The simplest way for CPU to help RAM is to keep all data compressed in memory. For textures that's done by the GPU nowadays, yet world data can also be kept compressed and decoded on the fly. That's what we did when I still worked in GPS navigation. All the map data was compressed to the max with hash tables for random access, loading in chunks at a time to decode while searching or rendering the map. All with efficient memory use, storing everything in RAM with as few bits as necessary. More work for the CPU to decode and encode all the time, yet RAM was the bottleneck. For games, think of Minecraft data all being compressed in memory to allow for bigger worlds.

And the other way around RAM can help the CPU by keeping more stuff around and pre-loading / preparing stuff when time left over. So for procedural generation, more RAM allows you to work ahead, buffering basically. Thus when the user decides to sprint ahead, you already have it available. Culling is great for rendering, but as FS2020 showed, actually throwing away the data from memory is problematic when you look around. It's fine if you stare straight ahead all the time, yet for example in VR you can't purge the world behind the user as you can look around at any time. (Well you can in most games)

And yep SSD and direct to video ram loading helps. I still found using a ram disk for cache faster than SSD, but just leaving it in RAM (turning off the aggressive culling in FS2020, which they mistakingly named pre-chaching, works the best obviously. It's more post-caching if you leave the stuff behind in ram until it's out of range. Anyway just means do do double work in the end)

More RAM also makes development easier and faster. Optimization is hard work and easy to introduce hard to trace bugs. Pointer arithmetic for example is great way to optimize code and reduce memory use, but so easy to introduce hard to find fatal errors.

Consoles get "full" (or close to full) 3rd party support throughout a generation when they're adequately powerful and popular, Series S is neither of these. Some developers will not want to be stuck for 10-13 years to a system that is both weak and unpopular. So far it looks like PS5's specs/price is perfect for the current economics, so it (and comparable consoles/PC's) should be the new standard. Mandating Series S would lead to plenty of ambitious PS5/PC games skipping Xbox. MS should take a PC like approach (system requirements) at this point and officially make Xbox a full blown hybrid between console and PC. It would piss off some early adopters, but the pros outweigh the cons... I think.

As far as I'm concerned Xbox's current relative success has nothing to do with the Series S. But again, by the end of 2023, a lot of opinions including some of my own will change. This year should be a lot more indicative than previous years as to where the market is heading.

Think my math is correct on this. Series S is 10GB and X 16GB 10/16 = 0.625 meaning a loss of 37.5%. 16GB*0.375 = 6GB (the diff between X and S)

I know. And my point was: it's okay to have sub-4k@60fps games, it's still better than the 1080p@30fps we got from most of the last gen games. 

But next-gen at 792p@30fps, nah.

6 is 60% of 10.

The increase from 10 to 16 is 60%.


Comes down to how you frame your percentages/question.

No "r" in my name.