Tekken director Harada says Xbox Series S holds back console development

Former Tekken director Katsuhiro Harada said he wished hardware like the Xbox Series S would not have been released, speaking at a developer panel while a senior Xbox official was in the room. The comment drew laughter and agreement from other developers over optimization costs. For players, the dispute explains why some multiplatform games look or run worse on the cheaper Xbox.

What Harada and CD Projekt Red said on stage

The remarks came at the Console Game Developers Conference 2026 in South Korea, in a panel moderated by former Sony president Shuhei Yoshida, according to Inven Global via Eurogamer. Participants included Shift Up CTO DongKi Lee of Stellar Blade, Too Kyo Games CEO Kazutaka Kodaka of Danganronpa, CD Projekt Red associate game director Pawel Sasko of Cyberpunk 2077, Ludeon Studios CEO Tynan Sylvester of Rimworld, and Harada, now CEO of VS Studio. Asked about console development challenges, Harada first noted that fixed console hardware suits fighting games, tournaments and esports events, then turned to the Series S.

Harada asked Sasko whether he was upset inside because of the Xbox Series S, prompting laughter. Sasko replied that the console constantly throws challenges at developers and forces very clean code optimization. Harada described low memory as an issue, but said the hardest part was that the Series S is similar to the Series X while having awkwardly lower performance. He contrasted that with Switch 2 ports, where teams can treat the hardware as a distinct device for Nintendo fans, while the Series S feels like extra work for a slightly weaker sibling after delivering the best output for Series X.

Why cheaper hardware raises costs for studios

The economics matter because in markets like the United States there are more Series S users than Series X users, Harada said, so studios cannot cut corners on the weaker version. After launch, he added, Series S owners direct complaints at developers rather than Microsoft, asking why texture resolution is lower only on Series S. Sasko offered a partial defense, saying optimization for weaker hardware made games run significantly better across all platforms, citing work on the Switch 2 version of Cyberpunk 2077 that was applied elsewhere to great effect. He also pointed to market expansion from the lower Series S price.

The exchange does not prove Microsoft will abandon a two-tier strategy. Harada joked that Sasko had packaged the Series S so gracefully that the Microsoft representative kept nodding, and worried it could encourage a successor such as a Helix S for the next Xbox. Shift Up executive DongKi Lee said he looked forward to the next-generation Xbox Helix and asked for early dev kits in Korea. Harada founded VS Studio earlier this year with support from SNK, alongside other former Bandai Namco Tekken staff, while reported high RAM and component costs have raised questions about pricing for future Xbox hardware.