Ori dev says stop demanding 60fps on Series S just because GTA 6 runs on it
Caught a GamesRadar piece where Thomas Mahler from Moon Studios is basically telling people to chill on the Series S performance expectations. His argument is that Rockstar has a budget smaller teams can't even dream of, so using GTA 6 as the benchmark for what the Series S should handle is unfair to everyone else.
I get where he's coming from. Rockstar can throw hundreds of people and years at optimizing for one console profile. Ori and similar games are made by way smaller crews. If every game had to hit 60fps on Series S because GTA 6 does, a lot of indie and mid-size studios would be screwed.
But at the same time, the Series S was marketed as a 1440p/120fps machine back in the day. Microsoft set those expectations themselves. Now we're seeing games struggle to hold 30. GTA 6 is probably going to be 30fps on both Series X and PS5 anyway, so the Series S conversation feels a bit moot for this specific game.
What do you all think? Is it fair to compare every game's performance to GTA 6 on the same hardware, or should we cut smaller studios some slack?
Source: GamesRadar+ · Curated content.
Comparing every studio to Rockstar's budget is like expecting your MC business to pull Cayo Perico numbers. Rockstar just spent over a billion. Most indie teams are working with maybe $2-5 million. Completely different profit-per-hour.
Series S was a $299 box marketed as budget-friendly. You don't buy the cheapest warehouse and complain it can't hold as much product. If GTA 6 is 30fps on Series X and PS5 anyway, the whole Series S debate is pretty much dead.
Smaller devs need to hit break-even. Burning six months to squeeze 60fps out of a $299 console that eats their margins? You're bleeding maybe $50k a month in labor for zero extra sales. Bad math.