Xbox Series X | S

[Pob]

5 minutes ago, Stanley said:

The big question that still hangs over the Series S, in my mind anyway, is whether they’ll still include a physical disc drive. Note they’ve already dropped the One S All Digital (SAD) in favour of the standard One S, so perhaps it was an experiment which didn’t really work, but now with the added emphasis on Gamepass perhaps it makes more sense at this juncture (to drop it).

 

I know they're dropping the One S Digital, but it would seem like such an obvious thing for the Series S to be all-digital. More cost savings, smaller box, ties in perfectly with their Game Pass focus. It makes much more sense than a no-disc PS5.

[Down by Law]

Series S seems so pointless to me. Why offer a gimped version of your super powerful next gen console right out the gate? Especially when the One X is a more than capable machine and only in it's 3rd year and was already being sold at an affordable price and included the features people are suggesting dropping to make the S more cost effective. 

 

Isn't the One X the lead console for Cyberpunk as well?

[Stanley]

Just now, Pob said:

 

I know they're dropping the One S Digital, but it would seem like such an obvious thing for the Series S to be all-digital. More cost savings, smaller box, ties in perfectly with their Game Pass focus. It makes much more sense than a no-disc PS5.

Yeah that’s what I’m thinking too - considering the lengths they appear to be going to in order to offer the cheapest price point possible it seems backwards to include the drive. 

[Stanley]

6 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

Series S seems so pointless to me. Why offer a gimped version of your super powerful next gen console right out the gate? Especially when the One X is a more than capable machine and only in it's 3rd year and was already being sold at an affordable price and included the features people are suggesting dropping to make the S more cost effective. 

Because most people aren’t concerned with 4K or other high end features, that’s why base PS4 and One S are still the biggest sellers, and despite the Series S having a weaker GPU on paper, the CPU will still be better and overall it will be a more capable machine than the One X, it just won’t do 4K. 

[Clipper]

11 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

Series S seems so pointless to me. Why offer a gimped version of your super powerful next gen console right out the gate? Especially when the One X is a more than capable machine and only in it's 3rd year and was already being sold at an affordable price and included the features people are suggesting dropping to make the S more cost effective. 

 

Isn't the One X the lead console for Cyberpunk as well?

I think it is DOA myself - a poverty spec console that will be worse than the Xbox 360 Arcade was

 

But it depends how they pitch it. If they can get the messaging across that both machines are nextgen full fat CPUs and the only difference is that the Series X is for thoise with a 4k tv and a Series S is for those with a 1080p TV then it might work. Emphasise that the games are exactly the same frame rate LOD etc just the Series X is there to push more pixels if you have a 4K TV.

 

That is a tough message to get over to the average consumer, to us it makes perfect sense, buy the nextgen machine that matches your TV but to Joe Bloggs I'm not sure that message would get across

 

Also it might work if the Series X is stupidly expensive

 

[5R7]

c'mon, people are playing wolfenstien on switch connected to 4k tvs in all its 240p glory!

 

It should also be able to do integer scaling out to 4k tvs, which would mean it looks sharper than just upscaling as well.

[Down by Law]

Seeing as one of Microsoft's big plans is that it's first party games will work any Xbox in the ecosystem that just makes it more baffling ....

 

If they could offer the One X at say £249 that plays Halo Infinite at 1080p, then why come out with another box at say £299 that plays Halo Infinite at 1080p, just it'll cost more than the X did and likely won't have a 4K UHD drive so it's massively gimped in terms of backwards compatibility and multimedia features that originally made the X an attractive alternative to a PS4 owner in the first place?

 

 

[Stanley]

1 minute ago, Down by Law said:

Seeing as one of Microsoft's big plans is that it's first party games will work any Xbox in the ecosystem that just makes it more baffling ....

 

If they could offer the One X at say £249 that plays Halo Infinite at 1080p, then why come out with another box at say £299 that plays Halo Infinite at 1080p, just it'll cost more than the X did and likely won't have a 4K UHD drive so it's massively gimped in terms of backwards compatibility and multimedia features that originally made the X an attractive alternative to a PS4 owner in the first place?

 

 

In two years time, perhaps less, first party games won’t run on a One X because no matter how much better the GPU is the CPU is a huge bottleneck. 

[Alex W.]

The One X is pretty ancient hardware at this point. The improved performance per watt and convenience for developers may be worth junking it for a similarly-powered system based on the same hardware as the Series X.

[Clipper]

Just now, Down by Law said:

Seeing as one of Microsoft's big plans is that it's first party games will work any Xbox in the ecosystem that just makes it more baffling ....

 

If they could offer the One X at say £249 that plays Halo Infinite at 1080p, then why come out with another box at say £299 that plays Halo Infinite at 1080p, just it'll cost more than the X did and likely won't have a 4K UHD drive so it's massively gimped in terms of backwards compatibility and multimedia features that originally made the X an attractive alternative to a PS4 owner in the first place?

 

 

You don't know what performance options are being offered for 1st party games going forward, noone does.

 

And even on the one game you are basing it on you don't know what differences there are between One X Halo and Series S Halo and Series X Halo. Blithely saying the One X will do it at 1080p so it will be the same as Series S is quite the prediction.

[Down by Law]

Just now, Clipper said:

You don't know what performance options are being offered for 1st party games going forward, noone does.

 

And even on the one game you are basing it on you don't know what differences there are between One X Halo and Series S Halo and Series X Halo. Blithely saying the One X will do it at 1080p so it will be the same as Series S is quite the prediction.

 

Well yeah, you're right, but looking at what's been shown of Halo Infinite then looking at Cyberpunk makes me think the One X could handle Halo Infinite without breaking a sweat.

 

 

[Clipper]

2 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

 

Well yeah, you're right, but looking at what's been shown of Halo Infinite then looking at Cyberpunk makes me think the One X could handle Halo Infinite without breaking a sweat.

 

 

yeah maybe so. I  think there are too many ifs in both our posts

 

Not enough info in general but it is an interesting strategy, not necessarily a good one but interesting Certainly more interesting than TVTVTV

[Dudley]

1 hour ago, Ferine said:

I'm curious how much cheaper Series S can be unless Microsoft are just going to eat a big loss. The GPU will be cut back and they can probably drop a few GBs of RAM, but I don't know how much of a saving that actually amounts to in terms of manufacturing. 

 

I worry about that. Cutting back on something like RAM could hamstring Series X games as much as S if things need to run on both.

 

1 hour ago, Pob said:

Yeah I'm sure I read that the One S will be the only current Xbox to remain on sale.

 

It already is the only one being made yes.

[Stanley]

Won’t the extra ram be mainly for higher resolution textures? 

[footle]

38 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

Series S seems so pointless to me. Why offer a gimped version of your super powerful next gen console right out the gate? Especially when the One X is a more than capable machine and only in it's 3rd year and was already being sold at an affordable price and included the features people are suggesting dropping to make the S more cost effective. 

 

Isn't the One X the lead console for Cyberpunk as well?

 

Surprise!

 

The OneX has a rubbish CPU. CPU and SSD are the main selling points for this coming gen.

[Down by Law]

Ha well at least I can be objective i.e the PS5 looks like shit and the PS4 controller / chargers being scrapped is also shit, rather than being a chest pounding advocate of everything Sony does. It's hard for me to understand or get excited about the reveal of a machine that's going to be worse than the one they already unveiled but you know why try to discuss these issues when we could just tie ourselves to corporate flags and be done with it.

The Xbox 360 Core and Arcade systems were useless after the first year or two so why go around the same thing again? Sure not everyone needs 4K but it's harder to buy a 1080p set these days and if you've got the money to get one of these systems early there's a high chance you already have a 4K tv as well.

 

And again this is all conjecture as we don't know the S Series specs yet but if people are talking about them dropping disc drives and 4K support to justify the cost....then what's the point of it?

[MikeBeaver]

1 hour ago, Alex W. said:

If they were going to do that they could just keep selling all of them a bit longer. There’s presumably a reason why the most basic Xbox is the one they’ve kept on.

 

Presumably, they are using the machine tooling that was being deployed to make the SAD and the OneX for crafting the XSX, and possibly the XSS.

1 hour ago, Pob said:

 

I know they're dropping the One S Digital, but it would seem like such an obvious thing for the Series S to be all-digital. More cost savings, smaller box, ties in perfectly with their Game Pass focus. It makes much more sense than a no-disc PS5.

 

If the Series S has a disc drive, I'll be getting that, I'm running a decently sized 1080 monitor, I play the machine so little as for it not to warrant upgrading the panel any time soon, I'll get 4K when a decently priced second hand one lands at my feet, same as I did in the upgrade from SD to HD, all that matters is the console is sort of next gen and performs better on my set than the One X I currently have, can bring my Elite pad forwards to the new machine, all my current and future content will run on it. It might only be 1080p not 4K, but no point having all those bells and whistles if you can't use them.

[bear]

I think people are reading too much in to the decision to keep the One S around while killing off the SAD and the One X. Open to correction on this but I think all the console manufacturers have experienced a jump in hardware sales as a result of the coronavirus lockdowns while you'd expect PS4 and Xboxone sales to be down at this point in their lifecycles if you look back to other generations. So we've had companies experiencing higher than anticipated sales while at the same time production capacity has taken a severe hit due to the virus so they were going through stock much quicker than they expected. MS have to start making Series S and X consoles but they can't just leave the console market for the next four months so they had to leave one of their current consoles in production. The standard One S is the logical choice. 

[Stanley]

2 minutes ago, MikeBeaver said:

 

Presumably, they are using the machine tooling that was being deployed to make the SAD and the OneX for crafting the XSX, and possibly the XSS.

 

If the Series S has a disc drive, I'll be getting that, I'm running a decently sized 1080 monitor, I play the machine so little as for it not to warrant upgrading the panel any time soon, I'll get 4K when a decently priced second hand one lands at my feet, same as I did in the upgrade from SD to HD, all that matters is the console is sort of next gen and performs better on my set than the One X I currently have, can bring my Elite pad forwards to the new machine, all my current and future content will run on it. It might only be 1080p not 4K, but no point having all those bells and whistles if you can't use them.

Tbh I have a One X, a PS4 Slim, a Switch and I play them all on a 49” 4K TV, and they all look great - especially with HDR which the PS4 also supports, and the telly does a good job of upscaling. So my point is that even though I have a 4K TV I’d still be tempted by the cheaper machine as I know it will still look awesome, I think 4K is less important than we’re lead to believe. 

[Alex W.]

What if there’s a third console hiding in plain sight on that controller box:

 

Xbox Series |
 

”Xpipe”

 

It’d be shaped like a pipe.

[Stanley]

I mean, come on, if the Series S looks as cute as a GameCube who wouldn’t want one? 

[bear]

The Series S is presumably going to bring all those day to day quality of life improvements they showed off earlier this year with the fast game/app switching, quicker loading times and hopefully an OS that's consistently responsive. I've said it before but I genuinely believe that the enhanced usability of the next-gen where consoles behave more like modern computing devices will be the biggest change people notice once they get their hands on them. Not something that'll get your pulse racing but nice in its own way. 

[footle]

31 minutes ago, Down by Law said:

It's hard for me to understand or get excited about the reveal of a machine that's going to be worse than the one they already unveiled but you know why try to discuss these issues when we could just tie ourselves to corporate flags and be done with it.

And again this is all conjecture as we don't know the S Series specs yet but if people are talking about them dropping disc drives and 4K support to justify the cost....then what's the point of it?

it’s not really about being excited, more a news post.

and the point of it is a lower cost of entry to nextgen experiences, if you don’t think that that requires a disk drive (cf. an all digital PS5) or 4k support (cf. lots of people in this thread who’d appear to be happy to trade 4k for £200 or whatever).

 

whether it’s a strategy that works will depend entirely on the price difference and how they choose to bundle it in subscriptions. But it’s definitely more interesting to talk about (if not to own - I’m with you on that one) than DS4 compatibility.

 

(thinking about it, I’m not sure what the last Xbox disk I bought was, and my last two full price purchases were the obvious ones on PS4, one of which was disk: I could drop the Xbox disk drive quite easily, but I’m less sure about the PS5 one).

[Stanley]

Have they confirmed yet whether the new Xbox pad will have a built in battery? That’s definitely a change I’d like to see. 

[Down by Law]

9 minutes ago, footle said:

 

whether it’s a strategy that works will depend entirely on the price difference and how they choose to bundle it in subscriptions. But it’s definitely more interesting to talk about (if not to own - I’m with you on that one) than DS4 compatibility.

 

Totally agree it's going to come down to price, but seeing as both of them are playing silly beggars (NO - YOU GO FIRST) it's difficult to see what the eventual strategies are. Hopefully by the end of the month everything's been laid out on the table. If Microsoft can say '£200 cheaper' then that's all the reasoning the Series S existence needs. 

 

 

[monkeydog]

2 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Have they confirmed yet whether the new Xbox pad will have a built in battery? That’s definitely a change I’d like to see. 

Why? Rechargeable AA's are better

[Stanley]

1 minute ago, monkeydog said:

Why? Rechargeable AA's are better

Because it’s a feature that’s standard on every other console and every other modern device and has been for some time, we really shouldn’t have to put up with batteries at this point. 

[footle]

7 minutes ago, Stanley said:

Have they confirmed yet whether the new Xbox pad will have a built in battery? That’s definitely a change I’d like to see. 

the pad screenshot shows aa batteries included so no.

[SweatyTravolta]

1 minute ago, Stanley said:

Because it’s a feature that’s standard on every other console and every other modern device and has been for some time, we really shouldn’t have to put up with batteries at this point. 

 

I'd much rather continue to use my eneloops than rely on a single use battery which renders the controller useless when it goes. It just makes so much more sense.

[footle]

Just now, Stanley said:

Because it’s a feature that’s standard on every other console and every other modern device and has been for some time, we really shouldn’t have to put up with batteries at this point. 

And in every case they’re anti-consumer (and I include the Elite 2 in that), particularly if the form factor doesn’t require it.

Ipad batteries and iPhone batteries degrading, while not being user replaceable costs money (£80 every couple of years?). The DS4 battery is hilariously shit after a couple of years etc.

 

rechargable and user replaceable would be fine. But if you’re going to do that, you may as well go AA or AAA.