Here’s how Xbox Series S backward compatibility really works • Eurogamer.net

While Microsoft has been very forthcoming about how Xbox Series X backward compatibility will work, it hasn’t been as clear how the smaller, cheaper Series S console works at running previous-generation Xbox games. Last week I had the opportunity to speak with the hardware developers and the news sounds very promising. Enhanced backward compatibility features aren’t just the exclusive property of the more expensive console – the S Series also has an interesting range of features.

Starting with the games that run on the old Xbox 2001, the ‘OG’ machine, we have confirmed that the Xbox Series S will run these games at an improved resolution. There’s a 3x increase in resolution on both axes, which means titles targeting 480p on the original machine will max out at 1440p on the S Series, presumably with a variety of performance benefits. The good news continues with the Xbox 360 enhanced titles released for the Xbox One X. These games will also be enhanced for the S Series, this time with a 2×2 resolution multiplier, bringing titles that ran at native 720p up to 1440p. While this doesn’t match the maximum 4K we saw on the Xbox One X, there is potential for improved performance elsewhere thanks to the much faster Zen 2 CPU architecture. In scenarios where the Xbox One X was limited by its Jaguar CPU cores, the S Series has much more headroom.

It has already been confirmed that the ways the S Series and X Series handle Xbox One titles vary. Only the X Series will benefit from Xbox One X enhancements to existing games, which generally boil down to resolution increases, higher-quality textures, and other graphics-based effects. Xbox Series S brings its additional power to enhance the experience of Xbox One S titles. This is more limiting in some respects (a game coded to run at 900p will not perform higher on the S Series, for example) but the new console it benefits from higher resolutions in games that use dynamic resolution scaling, as well as improvements in quality of texture filtering. Obviously, running games from solid state storage significantly cuts load times, while the Auto HDR feature we’ve seen on the X Series is featured on the S Series as well – all games should present well on HDR displays, already. whether they natively support high dynamic range or not. . It’s a feature that I personally can’t wait to try. Finally, it goes without saying that CPU-limited titles should also offer more stable performance at target frame rates.

However, there is one more feature that Microsoft has only mentioned in passing, and now we know more details, we are excited about it: the idea that select Xbox One titles will run at double the frame rate on new consoles, including Series. S.

“We designed the S Series to enhance Xbox One S games in a way that the Xbox One X cannot,” says systems architect Andrew Goossen. “We made it easy to update existing Xbox One S games to run at twice the frame rate when also played on the S Series. When games are updated, existing games can be queried to determine if they are running on the new console. And in terms of performance, the S Series offers more than twice the effective CPU and GPU performance of the Xbox One, making it pretty easy for gaming to do this. And indeed, the S Series GPU runs Xbox One S games with better performance than Xbox One X. “

The way the Xbox One X handled unenhanced Xbox One S titles was interesting: Sure enough, users saw that the enhanced GPU was only running at half speed, their compute units split between vertex processing and pixels. The new consoles are designed to run legacy Xbox One titles with the full power of both the CPU and the new RDNA 2 GPUs.

“You don’t need a real performance tuning when you do this, and many times it’s as easy as changing three lines of code, and then the game works.” Goossen adds. “Even when it’s not that easy, the fixes are pretty minor. We had a triple A title where doubling the frame rate really worked perfectly, except the crowd animation was twice as fast as normal. And so on, that kind of Fixes are usually very very easy for developers to fix. We are working with game developers and publishers to update [their titles]. Basically, these will be select games running at double the frame rate on the S Series. “

Some games may see this functionality enabled by the developer themselves, while others may be collaborations between the creator of the game and the Microsoft support team.

“In some cases, for more service-based games or games that still have active communities, it will actually be easier for the developer to do so,” says Xbox Director of Program Management Jason Ronald. “And then in other cases we may be able to do things at our level, on behalf of the title, similar to how we have done in the past. These are all things that we are actively working on as we get closer to launch and we’ll have more to share on specific improvements to specific titles closer to launch. “

So as we understand it, existing Xbox titles can be enhanced for both the S Series and X Series in different ways – the compatibility team can step in with their own specific kind of magic, opening the door to running games. 30 fps to 60 fps and 60 fps titles. at 120 fps. Alternatively, developers now have the tools to see where your existing Xbox One games are running, and whether it’s an S Series or X Series machine, things like doubling the frame rate become possible (and perhaps other features could be enabled as well), all without having than ‘port’ your games to the next generation platform. The extent to which uptake will be there is of crucial importance, of course, but the potential is certainly very exciting and we can’t wait to test this out on the two new Xbox machines.