Metro Exodus dev says the Xbox Series S "present challenges" for developers

A Metro Exodus developer has said that the scaled-down GPU performance of the Xbox Series S "presents challenges" for game developers.

Speaking to WCCFtech, Oleksandr Shyshkovtsov, chief technical officer at 4A Games, said that while the console's reduced RAM isn't currently an issue for the developer "GPU performance presents challenges for future titles." Shyshkovtsov goes on to say that 4A is currently aiming to render its games at 4K resolution and 60 fps, but the limits of the less powerful console "would require us to do more expensive calculations, dropping performance even further."

The studio has a solution to the issues posed by the hardware, but it's a "compromise," and Shyshkovtsov says that he's "not satisfied with it yet."

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The Xbox Series S is smaller and less powerful than Microsoft's other new console, the Xbox Series X. That does mean that it's about $200 cheaper, but isn't capable of running games in 4K, and has significantly less RAM. That might not be an issue according to Shyshkovtsov, but the XSS also boasts just one-third the computing power of the XSX - four terraflops compared to 12 in the larger console.

It's an interesting issue - as the new console generation progresses, developers will want to take advantage of the power of the XSX and the PS5, but will also have to account for the minority of Xbox players on the weaker console. As Cyberpunk 2077 showed us last year, adapting for less powerful machines can prove a major stumbling block.

Here's how the Xbox Series X stacks up against the Xbox Series S.