Microsoft is getting a bad rep because they don't want to let the Series S go. They are not handling these problems very well. The Series X should be the "cheap" platform and they should have a "Pro", called Series XS (pronounced excess, you are welcome Microsoft), so they are the platform that people want and not the platform that's holding back games.
The problem is the Series S sold a lot, last I read it was about two thirds of their user base. Microsoft also want to push platform independence using X Cloud, which solves their Series S issues, but with the feature parity requirement in the Series X and S, they keep hitting this issue.
That's a very bad business strategy, it should be one or the other, X Cloud or in Console parity. The parity being the weak one. I would like to know the defense arguments for this strategy.
The thing is, if a game releases on Series X without any bonus bells and whistles like (pick one) 4K, 60fps, or ray tracing, it’s kind of failed the move to next gen. If it then cannot scale any of those things back for the Series S, then it’s failed at designing scalability.
The new consoles do not exist to serve programmer inefficiency.
Do developers still make different games for different consoles? I thought the Xbox X was just a stronger Xbox One. Does MS disable these high quality graphics options in the menus?
Xbox has a packaged release system designed for that. Since the Series S isn't really meant to go over 1080p, developers are encouraged to only include smaller versions of textures since anything too detailed would be wasted.
PS5, by contrast, tends to have simplified video settings panels so gamers can prioritize what they want - be that raytracing, 4K, or 60fps. Often, just having the extra power doesn't necessarily matter if the game is coded against taking advantage of it. (I think Bloodborne is infamous for this - it hasn't gotten an update, so even on PS5, everyone must play it locked at 30fps).
Similar to how the PS5 had “8K” on the box; it’s only technically capable of that for the sake of videos, but most games tend to go a bit smaller resolution for practical rendering.
I mean...I think yes, at some point a marketing department made that claim, which is unfortunate because that's ultimately far from reality and most people know it. The claims made of the Series X and PS5 are also usually exaggerated, because most salespeople can get away with prefixing any claim with the words "up to".
I read that it has nothing to do with the hardware, and is in fact because of Sony having an exclusive deal to release only on their platform the first few months.