Xbox Series S specs have once again become the subject of debate after a Rocksteady Studios’ technical artist claimed that the console’s “potato” GPU has been “hamstringing” multiplatform development. This morning, another developer sparked an intense discussion on social media by tweeting that a number of studios have been trying to convince Microsoft to drop its Series S launch requirement for current-gen games because it can be “an albatross around the neck of production.”
Have Xbox Series S specs been giving devs a headache?
The dev in question is Bossa Studios VFX artist Ian Maclure. Bossa is the company behind Surgeon Simulator games, and recently released I Am Fish for Xbox Series S. Maclure was responding to a tweet by journalist Jeff Gerstmann, who expressed doubts over the claim that Xbox Series S is holding back current-gen game development.
“MANY developers have been sitting in meetings for the past year desperately trying to get Series S launch requirements dropped,” Maclure wrote in now-deleted tweets. “Studios have been through one development cycle where Series S turned out to be an albatross around the neck of production, and now that games are firmly being developed with new consoles in mind, teams do not want to repeat the process.”
It’s unclear why Maclure deleted his tweets but it’s safe to assume the backlash was swift.