Performance settings for this RPG show Xbox players what to expect — Series S might be a mistake for Crimson Desert

Unless you’ve been out in the desert, you’ve most likely heard about one of the most hyped games releasing in a week, Crimson Desert. Pearl Abyss, creators of Crimson Desert, have created a massive open-world RPG based on the ever-popular Black Desert universe.

Gameplay trailers for the game have been growing wildly popular as more and more features are revealed by the team. Standard combat, farming, home ownership, and even mech-driving. For the first time, it might be easier to ask, “What doesn’t this game have?” rather than what it does.

All these features and gorgeous open world have been pawing at one consuming question: how is this game going to run? Ambitious projects like this have come and gone, but hardly ever do they run well.

Today, Pearl Abyss finally revealed to the world at large what we can expect going forward with Crimson Desert, and everything but the Xbox Series S looks to be getting target settings.

Xbox Series S is looking rough

The game will launch with three modes for Xbox Series X, and two for Xbox Series S, which I’ll get to in a minute. The standard 3 settings for Series X will be:

• Quality: 4K, 30 FPS, Ray Tracing: High
• Balanced: 4K upscaled (1280p), 40 FPS, Ray Tracing: Low
• Performance: 1080p, 60 FPS, Ray Tracing: Low

So far, so good, right? Getting a 60 FPS option, albeit at 1080p without upscaling, is great for such a large game this far into the generation. What’s not looking so hot is the Series S.

• Quality: 1080p, 30 FPS, Ray Tracing: Off
• Performance: 720p, 40 FPS, Ray Tracing: Off

I’m sorry, but did I just read that the Xbox Series S is running at 720p in 2026? I’ve said this a few other times, but I think it’s time to admit the Series S may have been a mistake to some degree. You'd be better served buying it than streaming it on the cloud.

Sure, I get the whole “It was a cost-effective entry point into gaming” argument. However, at what point does the number of developers who’d had issues, or the countless 720p games, or broken graphics signal that there was too little hardware packed in there for primetime?

Now, the Series S isn’t even all that affordable. I get it’s less than an Xbox Series X, but it’s now embarrassingly $10 more than a PlayStation 5 Digital (At GameStop)!

For $10 less, you can get Xbox Series X performance instead. Neither has a hard drive, but if you’re going all digital for a console anyway, you might as well pick up the console that has more than twice the power.

🗨️ Things aren’t always bad, but what’s the larger impact?

Remember when everyone was saying the Series X would be the 4K 60 FPS machine while the Series S would be the 1080p 60 FPS variant? That one hurts.

Still, occasionally that ends up panning out. Like Resident Evil: Requiem, which runs at 1080p 60 FPS. Granted, the game is basically relegated to hallway scenes, but what Capcom made is gorgeous to look at, no matter where you play.

Looking at something like Crimson Desert, or Final Fantasy 16, games that ship with larger play areas, and the shortcomings of the Xbox Series S become all the more apparent. Heck, the little guy couldn’t even handle splitscreen coop for Baldur’s Gate 3 at launch.

Features like that, which clearly take more development time, or Microsoft’s help to figure out, begin to weigh on development times. We always hear it takes smarter development to work on the Xbox Series S, which is true, but having a comically small amount of VRAM+RAM isn’t a good way to force optimization on developers.

Creating a standard for developers to work from, not scale down, is generally the way it’s been in the console space. Games like GTA V and Gears of War 3, when they launched, were magnificent pieces of art that were made with one or two specific pieces of hardware in mind.

Imagine if back then, rather than having an Xbox 360, developers also had to develop for another system with even less RAM or processing power. I think it’s safe to say it would be somewhat of a nightmare, and if that’s the case, what does that mean for current developers?

How do you feel about the performance options for the Xbox Series S? Let us know below!

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