Xbox Series S Lockhart to be revealed this August

[Xlucine]

For lockhart? I don't think there's a chance of that - it'll remain feature complete so devs don't have to make any changes between console versions.

1) It'll be an easier upsell for the more expensive version if it adds RT
2) I think you're overstating the difficulty of this - any modern game engine will have the option to do light effects the usual non-RT way built in already, so they only need to set that option in the config file. They'll already need to have lower res versions of textures and test to make sure the game hits the target fps on the lower hardware, so it won't be a huge extra development effort (and for cross-platform games the work will have already been done for PC).

[kalniel]

1) It'll be an easier upsell for the more expensive version if it adds RT
2) I think you're overstating the difficulty of this - any modern game engine will have the option to do light effects the usual non-RT way built in already, so they only need to set that option in the config file. They'll already need to have lower res versions of textures and test to make sure the game hits the target fps on the lower hardware, so it won't be a huge extra development effort (and for cross-platform games the work will have already been done for PC).

Upselling with RT is a bad idea - they'd be competing against a what could be cheaper PS5 with RT. And I think you're understating the difficulty of non-RT lighting, it's not just a case of the engine coming with it, there's a huge amount of work. RT will eventually be much less work, so trying to persuade devs to spend the money for a cheaper console isn't going to happen trivially, certainly not for first party or exclusive AAA titles down the line that aren't going to support last gen. Lockhart will have RT I'm sure.

[markzero]

The box looks about half the size of the regular. I wonder how much different the wattage is, and also how much different the cooling system is.