I wonder why we discuss this, while still most games releasing are crossgen. How far are the gaps between pure current-gen releases? At this point the devs aren't even willing to abandon last gen. So let's revive this discussion, once last gen support has dried up, because Series S support will drop later than that.

There is no issue with the Series S. The S has everything it needs to run Series X games. Balders Gate having issues, yet the Matrix Demo run on the Series S has some questions that need to be raised with the Developer or MS tool set given to Devs.

We heard this before when Dying Light Devs came out and said a Performance mode for Series S wasn't possible, then months later released a 60fps Performance mode for the Series S.

If anything, the Series S points out laziness with Devs and publishers. It's a great option and piece of Hardware to help those in financial need yet still want to play next gen games. PCs offer budget cards, why can't Consoles.

There's plenty of people playing GTA 5 on last gen consoles who haven't bothered to put in the effort to upgrade. Now if present gen sales take off soon with hardware availability, like they are for PS5, and GTA 5 sales for present gen also skyrocket, then I'd say you have a point, but I don't see that happening. Lots of people bought GTA 5 for PS3 and never upgraded to the PS4 version, including me. As long as GTA 5 keeps being supported on last gen, lot's of casuals will keep playing it there.

If the worldwide economy finally stabilizes and starts rising again, then I could see XB Series X sales closing the gap with Series S and possibly overcoming it, but if things continue as they are, or get worse, Series S will very likely continue to keep selling better. Whether pricing stays as is, or eventually drops a bit, that still makes the much lower cost of a Series S an appealing purchase from that perspective, especially for casuals.

MS isn't looking at the gaming market in terms of what's best for devs, they're looking at it as what's best for consumers pockets. They haven't forgotten about the devs, they just aren't catering to them anywhere near as much as Sony is. MS has tried to beat Sony at their game but has failed like others have, so they're veering off and trying something a bit different, like others have, but in their own way. Somebody is always winning and losing, it just depends on who and how much.

I'm not making a case that this is what's best for all consumers or the gaming industry as a whole, I'm just pointing out that Series S makes sense based on the business case MS has made for it so far. Whether that case will still make sense once the economy is back on track is another thing. Maybe MS has always planned to discontinue the S mid gen, make X the new low end model and add a new upgraded model as the top tier. If Sony does launch the PS5 Slim this holiday, how MS reacts within a year of that will tell us a lot.

I mean when games skip Xbox, people will automatically assume it's purely down to Sony moneyhatting, so how will we be able to make a distinction? Silent Hill 2 Remake's PC minimum requirements are significantly higher than the Series S (disclaimer: this doesn't mean Series S absolutely "can't" run it). The Medium, which was also a current-gen exclusive (timed Xbox Series exclusive) from the same developer, had much lower system requirements. Mandating Xbox will make moneyhatting easier for Sony. As a matter of fact some developers who never intend to make a Series XS version of a hypothetical ambitious game (due to S limitations/challenges) will approach Sony for a deal, because it makes business sense, it's free money.

If Series S sales don't drastically pick up, MS better stop mandating it, it's for their own good. The majority of games would still come to it regardless because the Switch 2 will future proof it. A portable Series S SKU also has potential imo, but idk if MS is going that way.

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)

True but for simplicity sake I was referring to the target output of the title, texture can be any resolution but if you target a 4k output for a specific title and use a 4096x4096 texture for a specific meshes and you want to output @1080P on series S you will more than likely target 2048*2048 (a 4 time reduction) texture as it should bring you the same amount of intended detail. Unless you want to use the same texture or something in between in a bid to bake in some Super Sampling effect which is entirely up to the dev to decide.

And while 4096*4096 should do compress better than a scaled down 2048*2048 it's variable base on the actual texture and the gain in compression ratio become more and more marginal as the size grows not to mention the fact you are pretty much bound to use less effective lossless compression algorithm not to introduce compression artefact. 

Yes like TressFx or other similar feature, those are not what you would use for something dynamics and persistent and I'm not concerned at all for the series S on those aspect as they usually are all very scalable. For something dynamics you would not use those because meshes deformed by the GPU are not available for the CPU to perform logics on like collision and to be persisted.

At the end of the day CPU is the barrier for game functionality (which is why the Series S is scaled down in pretty much every aspect except this one) and the GPU is responsible for graphic fidelity. GPU is also the one being hungry in bandwidth and Memory size so scale it down and you can scale both the other accordingly. That's why on pc your graphics cards have their own dedicated faster memory pool.

PC system requirements don't mean much for console optimization. I believe Silent Hill is a timed exclusive for a year so it will come to Xbox eventually. That's a lot of assumptions without really anything to back them up. A 3rd party dev who wants to release a game on multiple platforms will likely reach out for support from MS if it gets to that point, especially if it's a big publisher or independent studio, before dropping it entirely. 

Why would they be stuck to the Series X|S hardware for 10-13 years? They will certainly drop support by then and move on to the next Xbox. 
You don't think the Series S has anything to do with sales up to this point? While Sony and MS were having issues making enough PS5 and Series X consoles, MS was able to make more Series S's and push sales for Xbox for the last 2 years. Now Xbox needs to put more focus making Series X consoles, but it worked out great or them early on. 

The Series S isn't going to be dropped until the gen is over. I'm not sure why this is even a talking point. There is a difference between what you think should happen and the reality of the situation. 

Pretty much yes, personally I would like the series to be even cheaper though. Maybe that was the plan but chip shortage kind of got in the way.

I view the Series S as an important tool for MS to unlock many market by virtue of being cheap. And by the end of the gen I even think it's possible with a Series S slim or something like it to see the return of a 99$ consoles option like the GameCube or Wii mini. 

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.