Katsuhiro Harada, former Tekken director, stated during a developer panel that he wished the Xbox Series S "wouldn't be released" while an Xbox representative was present. The comment occurred at the Console Game Developers Conference 2026 in South Korea, where Harada was part of a discussion about console development challenges. "Since a senior Xbox official is actually in attendance here today, I wish hardware like the Xbox Series S wouldn't be released," Harada said, according to Inven Global.
Harada compared the Xbox Series S to a "slightly weaker child," noting its similar hardware to the Series X but lower performance. CD Projekt Red's Paweł Sasko responded that optimizing for the Series S forced cleaner code, which improved performance across all platforms. "It constantly throws challenges at us and forces us to optimize our code very cleanly," Sasko said. Harada later joked that Sasko's response was a polite way of saying the console "sucks."