The Xbox Series S continues to elicit very different responses from game developers. We've covered several who've voiced concerns that the reduced power of the hardware, mainly its slower and smaller memory, would have a negative impact on next-generation games.
However, not everyone feels the same. For example, in a recent interview with GamingBolt, Fatshark CEO Martin Wahlund said the Swedish developers do not anticipate it will be a significant factor.
While the Xbox Series S will be yet another platform to contend with that will take some time in testing and quality assurance, many developers nowadays are used to a much more dynamic ecosystem of hardware. Even in the console space we have had different tiers of the same consoles for many years. The way Xbox Series S differs from Xbox Series X (memory amount and GPU horsepower, mostly) is for us much easier to adapt to than to for example the wide variety of PCs out in the wild or the way that the previous generation of consoles differed. Less memory and slower GPU are things that most game developers can dynamically scale for by scaling resolutions and graphics effects, while different storage solutions or widely varying CPU performance are much harder to adapt to. All in all, we don’t think that the Xbox Series S will significantly limit the game development progress as a whole in any way.
Fatshark is currently developing Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, which will be an Xbox Series S and X console exclusive (while also appearing on PC). Wahlund also revealed why the studio made this choice:
We have worked with Microsoft for many years, and they are a great partner. We are very happy with what we’ve been doing together with them with Vermintide 2, so now we’re building on that and will be doing more exciting things with them in the future. Also, it’s no secret, releasing on multiple platforms takes time, and we are ensuring that we can do a simultaneous release to PC and Xbox this way.
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is due for release this year. Stay tuned for more information on it.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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