Xbox Series S Phase Out is Something Spencer Can’t See, But he May Budge on Feature Parity

wccftech.com:

While the Xbox Series S has always been a bit divisive, controversy over the machine, and whether its holding back current-gen development, has reached new heights. This has largely been spurred by Baldur’s Gate III, which is not launching on Xbox Series X/S because Larian Studios are having trouble splitscreen co-op working on the Series S. There is also increasing reports of Series-S-related grumbling among studios, as the reality of development is, you have to largely design multiplatform games around the limitations of the lowest spec hardware you’re releasing on.

Well, in a new interview with Xbox boss Phil Spencer, Eurogamer asked flat out whether Microsoft would consider dropping the requirement to release all Xbox titles on the Series S. Spencer made it clear, he doesn’t see that happening, but did seem to be willing to budge on the notion that Xbox Series X and S games need to have feature parity.

“I don't see a world where we drop S. In terms of parity, I don't think you've heard from us or Larian, that this was about parity. I think that's more that the community is talking about it. There are features that ship on X today that do not ship on S, even from our own games, like ray-tracing that works on X, it's not on S in certain games. So for an S customer, they spent roughly half what the X customer bought, they understand that it's not going to run the same way.

I want to make sure games are available on both, that's our job as a platform holder and we're committed to that with our partners. And I think we're gonna get there with Larian. So I'm not overly worried about that, but we've learned some stuff through it. Having an entry-level price point for console, sub-$300, is a good thing for the industry. I