We’ve known for some time that theXbox Series Swascreating issues for game developers. To get a game onXbox Series X, it has to be more or less the same experience on the weaker Series S model. While reduced framerates and visual quality are allowed, the same features should be there, and some devs have been struggling to account for that during this console generation.
Now, another studio has voiced its concerns. While discussingThe Witcher 4, a dev fromCD Projekt Redsays that getting the game to 60 FPS on Series S is “extremely challenging”. They add that this is something they are aiming towards, but with the console likely being at least seven years old by the time The Witcher 4 is with us, that will be incredibly ambitious.
CDPR Is Trying To Make 60FPS Work On Xbox Series S, But It Isn’t Going To Be Easy
This comes from an interview withDigital Foundry. As spotted byWccftech, Charles Tremblay, VP of technology at CDPR, commented on the effort to get The Witcher 4 running on Xbox Series S.
“I wish we did a lot of work already on that, but we did not, so this is something that is next on our radar for sure,” he explains. “I will say that 60 FPS will definitely be extremely challenging on Xbox Series S. Let’s just say that this is something that we need to figure out.”
However, as we reported yesterday, Tremblay hasalso suggested that 60 FPS on other consoles isn’t guaranteed either. Thetech demo manages to achieve this on PS5, but this is just what the devs are aiming for, not what they’ve accomplished already.
It is worth pointing out that CDPR did manage to get the next-gen upgrade forCyberpunk 2077working on Xbox Series S, and even gave us a 60 FPS performance mode a little while after Series X and PS5 got it. However, I’m sure my fellow Cyberpunk fans who played on Series S can attest to the fact that everything took a battering when the Phantom Liberty update dropped, so the console is certainly struggling with CDPR’s more recent work.
Another point worth mentioning is that Xbox might be more lenient with CDPR, given that The Witcher 4 is a huge release. We saw this with Baldur’s Gate 3, which eventually made its way over to Xbox Series X and S later than PS5, after Xbox allowed Larian todrop split-screen multiplayer from the release on the weaker console. However, this wasadded in a later update.
In more extreme cases, the console can hold back Xbox ports altogether. Black Myth: Wukong still isn’t on Xbox, with the devs saying thatthis is because of the Series S. It’s set to launch on Xbox Series X and S in August of this year.
