The Worst Thing About The Xbox Series S
I’ve owned Microsoft’s “budget” next-gen console, the Xbox Series S, for just over a year now. It’s an awesome performer for the price, but the more time I spend with it, the more I notice the things that they had to cut in order to hit the $299 price point.
Which of these cuts bothers me the most? Is it the lack of a disc drive? The paltry 364 gigabytes of available storage on a digital-only machine advertised with a 512-gigabyte capacity? Or the fact that it lacks raytracing in several prominent titles in spite of that being the main marketing push for current graphics hardware?
Nope! Instead, it’s the disappointing performance in basically every Xbox game released before 2020. In spite of its beefy hardware, the Series S is stuck using base Xbox One settings in older games. It can’t take any advantage of the “One X Enhanced” game profiles released between 2017 and now without direct intervention from developers.
As a result, I’m stuck playing games like Dynasty Warriors 9 at 720p. The loading times and overall framerate benefit somewhat from…
