Microsoft Denies Xbox One S Will Have A Performance Advantage

The Xbox One S was announced the other day and according to Microsoft’s announcement, the console will support 4K video streaming and also HDR content, but other than that the console’s performance and hardware is expected to be in line with the current-gen Xbox One. At the end of the day the Xbox One S was supposed to be a slimmed down Xbox One with added features.

However a report from Polygon revealed that according to Gears of War 4’s developer, the Xbox One S actually has slightly improved performance over the Xbox One, which safe to say was surprising. This has since been refuted by Xbox exec Albert Penello who spoke to the folks at Eurogamer to clarify the reports.

According to Penello, “When we made changes to the box for 4K we unlocked a little bit more processing power to enable HDR. That’s it. It’s exactly the same architecture as the existing one. To support HDR, we give people access to a little more CPU and GPU. That’s it. It is so insignificant it is mind boggling it is being picked up.”

He added, “I promise, it won’t even show up. It will have no impact on games at all. Literally no impact. They will be identical. It’s nothing, it is literally nothing.” Penello’s claims were echoed by Xbox boss Phil Spencer in a separate interview who said, “I will say – and I’ve been asked about this – and I’m not trying to dodge the question, you should expect it to play your games the same way an Xbox One does. We did not design this to play Xbox One games better than the original Xbox One console.”

Tyler Lee
Categories: Gaming
Tags: E3, E3 2016, Microsoft, Xbox One, Xbox One S