[Microsoft's inexpensive upcoming game console boasts impressive specs but is not designed to support 4K content. This has some well-meaning tech journalists wondering: will the Xbox Series S be able to run certain games as well as the Xbox One X? The answer is "probably not."

The information comes from hardware disassembly channel Digital Foundry, courtesy of Video Games Chronicle In a reaction video about the Xbox Series S specs, Digital Foundry's John Linneman gave his opinion on how Xbox One X games would look on the less powerful of Microsoft's two new consoles.

"If you play an Xbox One game [on the Xbox Series S], it won't be an Xbox One X version of the game; you won't get 360 4K backwards compatibility or anything like that," he said.

As Digital Foundry editor Richard Leadbetter points out, the numbers seem to back up Linneman's claim:

"It hasn't been officially confirmed, but basically, rationally speaking, there's no other way," he Says." The Xbox One X has 9GB of system memory available for titles; the Series S has 8...... Still, that's lower than the Xbox One X, so I think it's almost a foregone conclusion that backward compatibility will be drawn to the Xbox One S as opposed to the Xbox One X."

Essentially, the Xbox One X was designed to run certain games at 4K resolution, while the Xbox Series S was not. The Series S is more powerful than the Xbox One X in most respects, but (presumably) not at all the same specs, especially when it comes to RAM.

While this may be disappointing news from a purely technical standpoint, it is hard to imagine a case where the end user would be truly devastated; gamers who purchased the Xbox One X were probably attracted to its powerful specs and thus willing to pay a higher price. The Xbox Series S is not for such users, who would instead buy the full-featured Xbox Series X.

Furthermore, the Xbox Series S will maintain backward compatibility with the exact same game library as the Xbox Series X. It is simply a matter of running (or not running) certain games in 4K, or improving frame rates and textures. Again, this may be a deal-breaker for gamers who want to push their consoles to the limit, but probably not the kind of players who would buy an Xbox Series S in the first place.

And again, educated speculation is not the same as confirmation from Microsoft, and since the Xbox Series S is still quite powerful, who knows, since the Xbox Series S already promises 4K upscaling, an Xbox One X feature, or even that similar to the Xbox One X does not seem to be entirely out of the question.