Katsuhiro Harada, formerly director on the Tekken series, is known for not pulling his punches. This truth was reinforced recently, as he said he wished the Xbox Series S “wouldn’t be released” at a developer panel. All while a member of the Xbox team was in the room.

Per Inven Global, Harada was sitting on a panel at the Console Game Developers Conference 2026 in South Korea. The panel was moderated by former Sony president Shuhei Yoshida, and featured Shift Up CTO DongKi Lee (Stellar Blade), Too Kyo Games CEO Kazutaka Kodaka (Dangenrompa), CD Projekt Red associate game director Paweł Sasko (Cyberpunk 2077), Ludeon Studios CEO Tynan Sylvester (Rimworld), and of course CEO of the newly formed VS Studio Katsuhiro Harada (Tekken).

Xbox Series S – Official Trailer

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The panel were asked about the advantages of console development, as well as specific challenges when creating games for certain platforms. Harada led the charge, speaking to the advantages consoles provide for fighting game developers, as the hardware is ideal for tournaments and esports events. Following this, he took an opportunity to speak about a console that drew his ire.

“That said, there’s something I really want to say while I have the floor. 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 (translations to English via Inven Global). Harada then asked Sasko from the CD Projekt Red team whether he was “upset inside” because of the Xbox Series S.

Sasko proceeded to “burst out laughing” according to Inven Global, before responding: “It constantly throws challenges at us and forces us to optimize our code very cleanly.”

Harada followed up with additional thoughts: “You just used a very polite and elegant way to say “Xbox Series S sucks,” right? (laughs) Low memory is an issue, but the hardest part is that it’s a device so similar to Series X while having awkwardly lower performance. When porting to Switch 2, developers can shift their mindset to ‘Switch 2 is a distinct device for Nintendo fans!’ But with Xbox, after delivering your absolute best output, it feels like having to do extra work for a slightly weaker child.

“Furthermore, in markets like the US, there are more Series S users than Series X users, so we can’t just cut corners. Yet after launch, Series S users direct their complaints at us developers rather than Microsoft, asking ‘Why is texture resolution lower only on Series S?'”

Sasko stepped up to offer some perks to the Series S. While he agreed that many players the full technical context behind the Series S’ weaknesses, he pointed out that optimisation for weaker hardware like the Series S made games run “significantly better” across all platforms. He even had a Cyberpunk 2077 example, as optimisation work done for the Switch 2 version were applied to all platforms “to great effect”. Sasko also pointed to the affordability side of the argument, saying that the cheaper price of the Series S allows for market expansion.

Harada responded: “Director Paweł packaged Series S so gracefully that the Microsoft representative in the audience keeps nodding along. I’m worried they’ll feel reassured and release a successor like ‘Helix S’ for the next-gen Xbox as well (laughs).”

Here, Shift Up’s DongKi Lee ended the topic with some optimism for Microsoft’s future consoles: “Personally, I am looking forward to the next-gen Xbox ‘Helix’. From an engineer’s standpoint, if you provide us with a dev kit first in Korea as early as possible, we will put in our best efforts to develop for it.”

Earlier this year Harada founded Vs Studio with SNK’s support, with other veterans from Bandai Namco’s Tekken team hopping on board for whatever it’s working on. As for the Xbox Helix consoles, in this current hardware environment with bloated costs for RAM and other components, it’s reportedly looking a tad expensive. Maybe a Series S equivalent is on the cards?