The developers at GSC Game World are in the final stretch of development for STALKER 2 after going through lots of hardships. At Gamescom 2024, I interviewed PR Specialist Zakhar Bocharov and Lead Producer Slava Lukyanenka to discuss what’s left before launch, and the optimization of the Xbox Series S version (with the help of the Xbox team) stood out.
Slava Lukyanenka: Well, our team is mature enough to take care of many aspects of the game themselves. Yet, the Xbox team knows best how the Xbox performs and what’s better to do in a case like we need to go deeper into the optimization. The Microsoft team visited several times, providing essential expertise on what else we could do that we didn’t think of. It’s not over yet. Aside from Xbox Series X, we’re still working on optimization for Xbox Series S. It’s going well, and the Xbox team is contributing a lot.
On Xbox Series X, we have two available modes. One of them is Performance Mode, where STALKER 2 is running with 60 FPS and slightly different graphics than in Quality Mode, which looks super awesome with all the reflections and high-resolution textures, but runs at 30 FPS. We are trying to achieve a similar experience on Xbox Series S by combining these two approaches. So far, we have it at 25ish FPS on the Xbox Series S, but we still have space to optimize.
I also asked about the Game Pass partnership with Xbox, and GSC Game World expressed gratitude for all the support they’ve received from Microsoft during the making of STALKER 2.
Zakhar Bocharov: That’s right. That’s a Game Pass partnership and Microsoft is not pushing us in any way to release on any date or just put the content out of the game or something like that. Actually, Microsoft, they are super supportive of us. We didn’t exactly ask someone from Microsoft to be our friends, but Sarah Bond is obviously a friend of the game. Phil (Spencer) was super supportive, all the teams from Microsoft were. They didn’t put any additional pressure on us.
STALKER 2 is out November 20 for PC and Xbox Series S|X, available on Game Pass from day one. Based on info from the Epic v. Apple legal fight, the game should be a console exclusive for Microsoft’s platform for three months, although this was never acknowledged by either Microsoft or GSC Game World.
