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LET'S FINALLY FUCKING COMPLAIN ABOUT THE LOCKHART XBOX
I caught wind of the specs of this one sometime early last summer when developer relations started really ramping up their shit. I get WHY they want this thing to exist - lower point of entry to try and gain budget players - but it doesn't make sense to me as a dev at all.
Let's start with the CPU. It's lower clocked, and ya it's not much, but it's not zero. Make all the claims in the world about the box being aimed at lower resolution, but that doesn't exactly fly for CPU. You're going to have things like game code on CPU on its own thread.
So, first point establishing the Xbox Series* base achievable spec as a lower tier console than the PS5.
Now GPU. On paper, this one makes sense - have the box aimed at 1440p60 instead of 2160p60, and cut down the GPU. But let's be perfectly fucking honest, neither the Xbox Series X or PS5 are 4k60 machines, unless we're cutting IQ from last gen. They can fuck off with 8k60.
So what we probably realistically have is the XbX at 1440p60 goal and drop down to 1080p60 for the XbS. However, you're losing 45% of pixels at that, and your GPU is more like 1/3 of hardware. That 1080p60 ain't happening without ALSO cutting image quality.
So now you've got a marketing problem - "visuals only capable on Xbox" has a huge asterisk that it's only on the expensive one. This didn't work on the Xbox One X, and I sincerely doubt it will work here. Sony can go "looks the same no matter which PS5" and have a big plus.
The RAM drop has the same problem. Since neither machine is really going to be a 4k60 box, you're not going to be filling RAM with assets for that resolution. Which also means that going from 16->10 (and realistically much less for developers) isn't as helpful.
At 10 gigs for the XbS, you're talking about developers MAYBE having an extra gig of RAM for their projects over games running on the Xbox One at launch. For a system said to run at 1440p60. That's fucking horrific, and of everything this is probably the worst problem.
So now Microsoft is right back where they were this past generation. The base console is worse than Sony's. Their upper tier console is better. However, last generation that meant fuck all because of sales, and what have they done to fix that? Nothing. So why support it well?
So now you have the Xbox base spec where you cut shit down to make it simply run. You have the PS5 spec that you spend the most time on because it's solid hardware and a good place to support.
Then you have the upper tier Xbox, where it maybe runs a bit better, or maybe runs at 4k native instead of 4k checkerboard, or maybe you turn on one or two fancy bells and whistles that nobody ever notices.
Looking at this from the outside, it's like Microsoft didn't learn anything from the last couples years of 360 where Sony caught up, or the PS4 years where Sony killed them. They have a weak game lineup and that's where they needed to start. Not this lower tier console.
And don't get me fucking started on ray tracing. That's gonna be minimally used on the PS5 and XbX. There's no way developers waste perf on that for the XbS. The whole thing is a really weird marketing point that both companies are stuck on.
Really at the end of the day none of this matters that much to 3rd party because they're probably setup for scaling anyway for PC and will be able to scale on consoles pretty well.
However, 1st party? Especially with MS's bullshit about supporting XB1 for a while? Microsoft's 1P spec is now a weaker spec than Sony's 1P target spec, and Sony has free reign to push that shit for the next 5+ years.
The whole thing feels like Microsoft is kind of treating this like their last generation as a hardware developer and just trying to expand their presence for future xCloud / Game Pass combos to where they don't have to lose money on manufacturing any more.
