Xbox Series S Will Be an Optimization Challenge, Admits Dune Awakening Developer

Developers have often cited the Xbox Series S console as a limitation and/or a significant optimization challenge during game development. Microsoft’s choice to deliver a cheaper but considerably less powerful hardware (the Xbox Series S only has 20 Compute Units clocked at 1.565 GHz for an estimated computing power of 4 TFLOPS, whereas the X has 52 Compute Units clocked at 1.825 GHz for an estimated computing power of 12.16 TFLOPS) still has fans debating whether it was worth it, four years alter. Xbox console sales are still dwindling, and developers continue to point at the issues of optimizing their games for the Xbox Series S.

The latest to do so is Funcom’s Chief Product Officer Scott Junior, whom we interviewed as part of our Dune Awakening Gamescom Q&A. In another interview at the Cologne convention, Junior told VG247 that one of the reasons for the game’s delay on consoles compared to PC is the need to optimize for Microsoft’s weaker console.

So, it’s one of the reasons we’re coming out on PC first. There’s a lot of optimisations we need to do before we release on the Xbox. But yeah, Xbox Series S is a challenge.

Unreal does a lot of the work for us in some ways. What we’re more doing is optimisation of assets, and using various technologies, be it FSR or something else, to replicate frames. We want the game to look stunning on high-end, whether you have a 3070 or a 4090, but we also want it to look good… I don’t think we’ve released our min-spec yet, but you know, powerful cards from a few years ago should be able to run the game. It should look good – it won’t be able to leverage the ultra-spec options, but it’ll still look nice.

At Gamescom 2024, we also heard from GSC Game World that the Ukrainian developer is now optimizing STALKER 2 for the Xbox Series S after successfully bringing it to 60 frames per second on the X. The game is currently running at around 35 frames per second, but they’re aiming to improve it (with some help from Microsoft’s team) before the launch on November 20.