The reveal of the Xbox Series S might be the biggest surprise gamers had for the past few weeks. This next-gen console will just cost $299 compared to the Xbox Series X’s stiff $499 release price, but with a guaranteed next-gen performance of 1080p to 1440p resolution.
At $200 cheaper, fans know that the Xbox Series S will have limitations compared to the Series X. However, they didn’t think that the Series S will not be receiving the same enhancements made for the Xbox One X.
In a press release made by Microsoft, the company explains that the Series S was built to be the cheapest next-gen console ever designed. This perhaps indicates that the past games are not that much of a priority.
Microsoft stated that “To deliver the highest quality backward compatible experience consistent with the developer’s original intent,” the Series S will operate Xbox One S versions of backward compatible titles.
Despite this, Microsoft guarantees that the Series S will still apply “improved texture filtering, higher and move consistent frame rates, faster load times, and Auto HDR” whenever applicable. These performance enhancements will differ broadly from game to game and there will be no guarantees that any given title will receive these improvements.
The Xbox One X is Microsoft’s prevailing mid-gen console for the Xbox One generation. Considering the Xbox One usually had a hard time with reaching even 1080p resolutions at 30fps, the Xbox One X became a huge leap forward in console performance, which offers native 4K resolution.
Game developers even take advantage of this feature by giving Xbox One X exclusive updates. To say that these updates were typically considerable would be an understatement, this is why fans are quite frustrated that the Series S will not be supporting them.
However, this is quite logical since the Xbox One X enhancements were already done by the game developers or by the third-party studio. In addition, they were created exclusively for the Xbox One X console. For these to work on the new Series S, developers would have to revamp the games completely for the new console. This just proves that the differences between the Xbox Series S and Xbox One X are too significant.