“It’s not a surprise, it’s a less powerful machine”
Several developers have recently stated that they have struggled with developing for the Xbox Series S, Microsoft’s less powerful current-gen console. Immortals of Aveum developer Ascendant Studios, whose CEO discussed the topic on a recent episode of the Xbox Expansion Pass podcast, is the most recent of these.
When asked about the Xbox Series S and its impact on Immortals development, Ascendant’s Bret Robbins had this to say:
“The S is challenging for a developer, no question about it. You have memory constraints that are hard and you have to unfortunately strip out some detail in order to really get a good experience. It’s not a surprise, it’s a less powerful machine than the X so there’s going to be a compromise you’re making to the game to some degree – it’s inevitable.
Especially as we were finishing the game there was a lot of work to make sure that it was a good experience on the S and that it looked good. You’re just dealing with a very different beast than the PlayStation 5, the Xbox X, or a high end PC.”
Immortals of Aveum is a demanding game even on higher-end consoles, so it’s not surprising that the team had to make compromises on Xbox Series S. At its core, this is a next-generation Unreal Engine 5 game.
Later in the podcast, Robbins stated that “there’s a good chance” that Immortals of Aveum will appear on subscription services “sooner rather than later.” Because the game was published by EA, it will eventually be included in Xbox Game Pass Ultimate as part of the EA Play library.
