A former developer of Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League has expressed strong frustration over the challenges of optimizing games for the Xbox Series S, calling it “annoying” and even wishing the console had “never existed.” This scathing critique comes amid growing concerns from developers about the Xbox Series S’s impact on game performance and its role in delaying game releases.

The Xbox Series S was launched alongside the more powerful Series X during the holiday season of 2020 as a budget-friendly alternative. Priced at $299, the Series S was designed with less storage, no disc drive, and a chipset that, on paper, is significantly less powerful than the Series X. However, it still offers the same features as its bigger sibling, making it an attractive option for gamers on a budget. Despite this, the console’s long-term viability has been a subject of heated debate, with many developers seeing it as a bottleneck in the game development process.

Game developers rarely speak openly about the challenges they face when developing for specific platforms, but a few have voiced their concerns about the Xbox Series S. One such voice is Del Walker, a former principal artist at Naughty Dog, Respawn, and Rocksteady, who recently worked on Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League. In response to a tweet discussing Xbox’s recent struggles, including the delayed launch of Black Myth Wukong on Xbox consoles, Walker suggested that the Xbox Series S is partly to blame for these delays.

Former Suicide Squad Developer Rips into the Xbox Series S

Walker didn’t hold back, describing the Series S as “annoying to optimize for” and predicting that more delays and even outright game skips on the Xbox platform could occur due to the console’s limitations. His remarks, while harsh, are not without precedent; earlier this year, the highly anticipated Baldur’s Gate 3 had to delay its Xbox release due to difficulties in optimizing the split-screen co-op feature for the Series S. Microsoft eventually allowed the developer, Larian Studios, to release the game on the Xbox Series S without split-screen co-op, a rare exception to the feature parity rule between the Series X and Series S.

Despite these challenges, not all developers share this negative view. Larian Studios CEO Swen Vincke defended the Xbox Series S, comparing it to the Steam Deck in terms of development burden, suggesting that the Series S is just another hardware configuration that developers must accommodate. This ongoing debate leaves the gaming community divided on whether the Xbox Series S is a hindrance or simply a part of the diverse landscape of gaming hardware that developers must navigate.

Source: Gamerant