PR manager for Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 studio Warhorse, Sir Tobi, has revealed that working on the Xbox Series S version of the game helped the studio greatly improve optimisation for the other platforms as well. In an interview with the Iron Lords podcast, Tobi spoke about the title’s development.
When asked about how the studio went about getting Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 to run at 60 frames per second in performance mode and 30 frames per second in quality mode, Tobi spoke about the level of optimisation the studio was able to get into.
“The priority was to make it 30 and make it run good and make it stable and make it bulletproof,” said Tobi when asked about the game’s console performance. “And when they found out, hey, wait a second, it seems like we can do moor especially with the new PlayStation [PS5 Pro] releasing that offered more power on the hardware, we were like if we test a few things here and there, and the optimisations also for the Xbox Series S helped greatly the other platforms as well.”
“It’s the weakest of the four [consoles], I mean that’s not even a secret, but since you have to dial down on a few things and have to be cleverer where you can in the programming and the code and so on and be able to save memory here and there, some of these optimisations for the [Xbox Series S] benefit the other consoles as well,” said Tobi when asked to elaborate on the idea.
“Because you can either go full force ahead with the big ones, or you use those memory savings that you found out for the S and use it for the bigger ones as well so that it runs smoother. Not saying that it looks worse or whatever than it could, but it runs better than it could,” he explained.
Tobi’s comments about the Xbox Series S helping developers optimise their games better for other platforms has been a sentiment shared by other developers, but has also been a contentious one with some developers criticising the console’s weaker hardware. Back in January, Black Myth: Wukong studio Game Science spoke about the console being a painful one to work on, and especially criticising its relatively lower amount of memory.
Other developers, on the other hand, have praised the console with helping them further optimise their titles. Larian revealed back in 2023, for instance, that it was able to get the VRAM usage of Baldur’s Gate 3 down by 34 percent thanks to the work needed to get the RPG running on the Xbox Series S.
While the limitations of the weaker console had forced Larian to forego local split-screen co-op for the Xbox Series S version of Baldur’s Gate 3, an upcoming update will seemingly bring the feature to the console. The update also got a stress test back in January.
Microsoft itself has also spoken favourably about the console, with Xbox boss Phil Spencer dismissing the idea that the company would drop support for the Xbox Series S.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. Check out our review for more details.
