Although some developers point to the Xbox Series S as a game-optimization challenge, others see Microsoft's low-cost console as an opportunity to find innovative solutions. This was reaffirmed to some extent during the development of Kingdom Come: Deliverance II, when the team identified ways to reduce memory consumption and improve the code, applying these optimizations first to the Xbox Series S version and later extending the benefits to the other consoles.

Tobias, the studio's Public Relations Manager, commented on the experience of adapting the game for Series S:

“Optimizing for Xbox Series S helped the other platforms a great deal. It is the weakest of the four [consoles available for the game], that is no secret, but because you need to reduce some things and must be intelligent about where to do so in the programming and code, and save memory here and there… some of those Series S optimizations benefited the other consoles too.

You can use brute force with the stronger consoles, or you can use those memory optimizations you discovered for Series S to make them run more smoothly. I am not saying they will look worse, but that they will run better.”

The studio emphasizes that this strategy is not unprecedented: Larian itself had already highlighted, during the launch of Baldur’s Gate 3, how adaptations for Series S made performance improvements possible on other platforms. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II is currently available for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S and was reviewed very favorably by critics, with Metacritic scores between 86 and 88 across the platforms.

Black Myth: Wukong Director Might “Disagree”

Black Myth: Wukong was one of 2024's biggest game releases and also brought discussions about the Xbox Series S's limitations to the fore. Despite speculation that the game's absence from the Xbox ecosystem might be related to exclusivity agreements with Sony, title director Feng Ji clarified that the decision was due to technical issues.

After Black Myth: Wukong won at the Steam Awards 2024, Feng Ji highlighted the Series S's 10 GB of shared memory as the principal obstacle to adapting the game to Microsoft's platform. Amid the celebrations over the Valve awards, he said:

“Although there were no major surprises, I feel a little emotional after winning all these Steam awards…”

The director then explained the reason for his title's absence from Microsoft's Xbox Series X and S:

“But the only thing missing is the Xbox version… It feels like something is wrong, but that 10 GB of shared memory, without several years of optimization experience, is very difficult to make work.”