where's the class action lawsuit? where are the dev companies that have protested this...brought it to public attention?
no where.
I am not sure if you doubt the facts I posted or simply want to know why there was no protest? What would be the lawsuit about?
The lawsuit can't be about abusing a dominant market position because the xbox does not have one. It is their own small app store where they can make almost arbitrary rules what they accept and companies have the choice to simply not participate. The costumers would have no chance either because they were informed that all games would play on X and S and even if not I don't see any grounds to bring Microsoft to court for limiting the ultimate scope of games on their platform.
Note that for most dev companies it doesn't matter for their game, because they simply can support 4k on the X and 2k on the S and their game will (approximately) scale well on both with some further optimization. But unusual games (games who need a lot more CPU power and RAM and much less GPU power) do not scale well. So the problem with the S is likely a **big** problem only for a few developers, a quite smaller problem for the majority
If you doubt this is true at all maybe read this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_Series_X_and_Series_S#Series_S_performance_problems
In that paragraph please note that "urging" is used in the first sentence but later "requirement". Also see that the following paragraph how Larian first did not release BG3 because they could not support Microsofts rule of feature parity, and only highest-level talks allowed it to violate the feature-parity rule.
It does matter...it goes back to what I asked a page and a half ago. If they knew that console hardware is just not good enough why did they do this release? why keep taking our money if the console is the problem? and consoles are the problem is something that gets said, and or implied, constantly.
It seems a legitimate question. TFP had the same opinion of the last gen consoles. I have had more than one staff member tell me that it is the console I own and not TFP who are to blame for how this plays for us. Well, it is reasonable to assume that, as a company, they did do a viability study, to understand the market and potential problems. or in plain english...they should have known that the "S" was half of the xbox market and it is more limited in cpu and memory than the "x". Anyone working in the console porting business would definitely know that. So I really do not believe that TFP just didn't know...or is it that they once again over estimated their ability...and so...not their fault?
At the time they made their decision to publish on console they presumably did not have the level of knowledge to exactly know about how difficult it would be. And even if they knew exactly how difficult it would be they could have decided that it was worth it, for reasons like
A) increasing income
B) satisfying players of the telltale games
C) getting it into the hands of more players
D) fullfilling whatever promises they made.
E) Preventing @%$#storms of xbox owners generally. If they had not supported the xbox at all, protests would have come as well as xbox users would have felt left out.
F) taking an opportunity. For example its possible that the publisher they found made demands for an xbox release.
G) maybe more?
I don't own a console, I don't know how bad it plays on the S. Without that knowledge I can not judge whether it was a mistake for TFP to do this. And it is quite impossible to judge from a handful of protesters here on the forum whether there is widespread discontent on the S or not. I seem to remember some people posting that the performance is problematic but they are happy they can play it.
You have the opinion that the game is unplayable on the S it seems. Well, I have heard that previously from PC players as well when I had fun with the game and for example did not mind a delay whenever I opened a menu. I also had a time where FPS tanked severly in horde nights or in cities. I didn't go on the baricades then either and had fun with the game. Players subjective requirements in that regard (as well as their requirements for graphics quality) are hugely different. This is why there is a time period for customers to give back a game. Does TFP think the game is unplayable? If not, they won't think it was a mistake to make those xbox owners happy who have fun with the game in its current state.
I can't speak for the others when they critisize the S. But if I would have to fix some blame somewhere I would be blaming Microsoft for splitting their console into two versions with very different capabilites and limiting the ways developers can react to that. And when I read Dead Smartys post above I think I clearly see the same direction of argument: He said "The S targetted budget gaming or grandparrents buying cheap Xmas gifts". Is there any reason to doubt that the S was targeted at budget gaming? "Budget gaming" means either someone doesn't have the money to buy a better version or gaming isn't worth that much to him to pay for the better version. There is no insult in there, it is a fact. If I had to buy a car today I would never buy a porsche, I would buy a cheap car. Have I insulted myself now?
