MarkMe2525
Member
If you want to play dumb that is ok. Don't act like I'm putting words into your mouth. In those "3 sentences" you stated staffing, tooling, cert, and qa just doubled.
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Tom Warren: XSS specs (20CU at 1.55Ghz ≈ 3.97TF, similar CPU to XSX, PCIe4 SSD ,, >250W, 10GB of ram and no disk drive)
mckmas8808
Banned
The cheaper console is there so that there will be someone there to make next gen Xbox games for because Xbox Series X on it's own would have stumbled out the door vs PS5 & dev support would dry up if they had to work hard for a small user base.
And about parents/grandparents buying Series S over Xbox One it's simple they like to buy new things.
SlimeGooGoo
Party Gooper
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mckmas8808
Banned
The bolded is the thing I just refuse to believe. I've seen Gaffers say this a lot lately, but I think it ignores that their needs to be demand for something before consumers decide to buy it. Millions of people worldwide aren't going to buy the XSS "just" because it's the new thing on shelves. MS will have to give those people a reason to demand or want an XSS. And if the choice is a $299 disc-less XSS and a $399 disc-less PS5, I'm not sure the majority will go with the XSS.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
What part of the UK you from Stilton? Random guess, Middlesex?
Codeblew
Member
Sure. The point is that it is more work than just turning a resolution dial.
Derktron
Banned
The fanboy is showing
Stilton Disco
Member
Only a couple of counties off.
I'm from Kent, which should explain why I'm such a cynical bastard.
The wife and I plan on moving to Cornwall or Devon in the next couple of years though.
-Arcadia-
Banned
Cool, be sure to swallow down every mainstream narrative without question, over what you see with your own two eyes, as well. No matter by who as well, credibility need not be checked, it's the word of god, right? It also gets a hit in on that Xbox, which judging by what I've seen of you around here, is very important to you.
As we all know, no Americans that aren't Donald Trump can afford internet. In this nation of poors, where internet caps kick in before you can download a single game, a discless system is truly DOA.
More professionally, without the satire, yes, $30 a month is cheap, but nice shift. You can spend that at a single fast food visit, a single movie theater visit, or even twice that getting a game. Likewise, I'll continue not even knowing what my cap is, or if I have one, despite blowing through what must have been half a TB when picking up a One X, as well as streaming 4K just fine on my third world American internet.
There goes that satire again.
We can say one thing, off topic. Britain certainly would seem to have better deals. But, that's hardly what's being argued, is it? It's whether America has the internet infrastructure to support an internet-only system, which is an absolutely absurd question on the face of it.
lachesis
Member
I have yet to try out game pass (as much as it's attractive proposal, the library doesn't have as robust games of my interest - mostly Japanese single player (niche) games. But if those games were there - I would have loved to put this on my downstairs 1080p TV that I use for retro gaming as second unit.
And for 4tf... I think it should be cheaper than $299 though.... More like $249, or $199 without controller be even better.
(I have a wired 360 controller that just won't die... - hoping it would work on all new games too).
And for 4tf... I think it should be cheaper than $299 though.... More like $249, or $199 without controller be even better.
(I have a wired 360 controller that just won't die... - hoping it would work on all new games too).
Knitted Knight
Banned
Gotta wonder how many publishers will decide to support this box if PS5 is the base for next gen. You have developers already deciding to bite the bullet despite current gen install base and do solely next-gen titles. That's a big commitment $$$$$ wise. In other words, they hate scaling back and working on multiple sku's so much they rather forgo money than to build a cross-gen game. If this thing doesn't sell like hotcakes I don't think many developers will even bother with it. It has to sell Switch like numbers for suits to demand and force a downscaled port. MS treading a fine line. They better not price themselves out with the Series X at $599 and put all their eggs on this box. They have clearly been scared to death of showing it and making the little hardcore faith they have left run towards Sony.
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DryvBy
Member
Lol, Covid isn't going to last forever. This thing is going to be another Xbox exclusive failure.
Coulomb_Barrier
Member
Nice. I was brought up in Kent, the garden of England. Moved nearer London, now spend my time on East Sussex coast with wife and kid. More sun but 2-3 degrees colder! Internet is about 5 yr behind London, but decent. Anyway, enough flirting
Low res textures will get made for LOD and other platforms anyway so that work needs to be done regardless of Series S.
BattleScar
Member
It had bloody well better be less than 250W. 20CU at 1500MHz is well below even RDNA1's V/f sweet spot.
mckmas8808
Banned
But what about Xbox exclusives?
WatDat
Banned
No. You are absolutely not reading it correctly, nor do I believe you even want to.
Ok zoomer
They are cross platform with PC now aren't they? If so they will need to scale for resolution and quality settings anyway so like I said no extra dev work.
There might be a bit more QA work to validate the best settings to use for each console but not a huge amount and it might be something MS take on as part of the certification process.
Tulipanzo
Member
Plenty of people seem to ignore that the more expensive version is the one that sells better, especially at launch.
What MS knows is that the minute the Series S is revealed properly it'll suck out all oxygen from their campaign.
They'll have to spend all their time explaining how much worse games will look and run, what features will be missing or cut back etc.
This thing might be cheap, but the point is it needs to be.
Underpowered as it is, it'll get the reputation the X1S has now: the wrong Xbox to get, with the worst running third parties.
What MS knows is that the minute the Series S is revealed properly it'll suck out all oxygen from their campaign.
They'll have to spend all their time explaining how much worse games will look and run, what features will be missing or cut back etc.
This thing might be cheap, but the point is it needs to be.
Underpowered as it is, it'll get the reputation the X1S has now: the wrong Xbox to get, with the worst running third parties.
WatDat
Banned
Hey, when yer right, yer right!
loktaiextatus
Member
No likely not. The GPU will perform fewer floating point ops but it can do more with what it has and has a much much... much... MUCH... much.
much much better CPU and supporting hardware.
I see. Thanks for the clarification.
I disagree.
If the average customer is presented with 3 (or more) price options, they tend to go to the middle. Companies will deliberately scale their services to take advantage of this. The $x.99 trick on prices is another example of leveraging psychology against customers.
In this hypothetical scenario
XsS - lowest price, lowest specs
PS5 - midrange price, much higher specs
XsX - highest price, even higher specs
The problem shows up if PS5 is a big jump from XsS, but XsX is not as big of a jump over PS5. Customers will "settle" for a midrange option that is "good enough" in terms of power. Brand reputation plays another huge role here. An example would be going to a quik lube or a car wash. The cheapest option is $7, the PREMIUM is $9, and the ULTRA PREMIUM is $17. It is likely that the PREMIUM will get the most sales as it is priced only a bit higher than the normal, and for a vanity service people tend to forget the $ cost.
5 Psychological Hacks That Will Make Your Pricing Page Irresistible | MarTech
How do you get your customers to make the right buying decision? Columnist Neil Patel explores the persuasive powers of the pricing page.marketingland.com
Microsoft is hoping to squeeze Sony out by offering the cheapest as well as the most powerful option. This is not a controversial observation. However, it is plausible this will work against them, as Sony offers one unified SKU and Microsoft offers two, in addition to the "middle pick" psychological issue mentioned above.
You're forgetting one key piece. There are still millions who are satisfied with their 1080p sets. They would view the XSS as the 'right fit' for them and the extra expense on a 4k console a 'waste'.
If this market is large enough this is nothing but a win for MS.
Elder Legend
Banned
Not sure what planet you are on buddy but when mommy or daddy walk into the store to buy their son the latest toy this holiday season and they see the following
Xbox Series S - $299
Xbox Series X - $499
PS5 Digital - $549
PS5 Physicial - $599
They won't even have any second thoughts.
They not gonna worry about your double SSDs speeds or 12 tFlop numbers or 1440p vs 4K.
Tulipanzo
Member
Well, the X1X has more RAM, and its GPU is more powerful, even accounting for IPC gains.
What this means is games would need new patches, or run at X1 settings (which makes sense for a 1080p console).
From a marketing POV, MS's older console has a higher TF number, which is hard to justify to a customer.
Tsumake is wrong, but that confusion is not unjustified or uncommon.
It's going to be trouble when unsold X1Xs get put on sale come year's end, because it is more attractive for BC/4K content, has a disc-drive and might be even cheaper.
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ultrazilla
Member
I'll skip the "Series S"................................ I want
If you are using a 1080P TV, is there any reason to get a Series X over a Series S, besides the disc drive?
The way they’re muddying their SKUs reminds me of Sega back in the day.
Tulipanzo
Member
Yeah, when people walk in your imaginary store with PS5 at over $150 over its build cost and Series X taking an over $100 loss.
Presumably they'll come in riding a unicorn and buy their console from a leprechaun for 12 magic beans
Elder Legend
Banned
Nice dodging dingus. What I said still stands true but yet your focusing on the price to downplay a true statement. These prices are just estimates and examples. For all we know both could cost $599 on the high end consoles. No one knows the prices other than it will range from 499 to 599 for both high end systems
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Dr Bass
Member
I totally agree here. I mean maybe they meant Series X as well, but I guessed awhile ago they were saying "We wont lose the performance war (series X) and we wont lose the price war (Series S)." This makes WAY more sense than just saying they were going to price the Series X lower than the PS5 no matter what.
The GPU in the one X is about on par with a 4 Tflop RDNA2 GPU in raw rasterisation performance but the one x is missing RTRT and double rate fp16 and int8 instruction. GCN also does not have VRS which will make a large difference and it also has much worse triangle culling so it wastes more cycles on stuff that you can't even see.
The Series S will also have an SSD and vastly superior CPU so the One X won't be able to compete on performance.
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anothertech
Member
Craig
Dr Bass
Member
And then when their son starts crying on Christmas morning because they bought him the wrong one?
I know if I was a parent 50-100 bucks wouldn't even be a second thought in terms of getting my kid the actual thing they wanted. So many people still don't get it. MOST people don't want "the box." They want the games the box plays. They aren't going to buy a box because it's cheaper unless it has the software they want.
Tulipanzo
Member
Your estimates are completely detached from reality, and only exist to rationalise the Series S making any sense.
At $450 bom, the PS5 is going to be less than $500. Likely the Series X as well.
This makes the Series S an obscenely worse system for about $100 savings.
Aiming at people that don't buy consoles at launch anyway, it's an awful proposition.
You'd genuinely be better off buying an X1X for cheaper, then buy a discounted XSX when MS starts actually releasing exclusives.
Elder Legend
Banned
If the kid wants a ps5 then he would say so lol. And parents could either object because it costs to much or end up buying it.
Point is, majority of average casual crowd are going to go for a lower price and that's a fact.
People like us will buy what we want. I am personally getting both high end systems because I am a gamer at heart and want the best for myself and best of both worlds.
loktaiextatus
Member
More than true. If your kid asks for a playstation 5, I could see a parent buying the cheaper one but.... any parent knows - its not going to be pretty if you buy literally a different thing.
That said - Gifts for kids arent the majority of purchases early in a generation so those prices are probably not for Timmy so much as Tim Sr. The low price will garner sales but
how to put this..... The existence of the Moto G doesnt exactly kill Iphone flagship sales.
Tulipanzo
Member
You're considering IPC gains over base GCN (which are still below 6TF), but X1X is Polaris, meaning it's more advanced then the GPU in X1 or PS4.
Again, why would a 1080p device need 4K enhancements?
I'm not arguing the Series S has no advantages, but they're very minor and hard to sell, especially when you can find an X1X for very cheap, or might already own one.
Elder Legend
Banned
Why would someone buy a X1X? It is inferior in every way. Just because its an old gen system... and 6.2 teraflopa are not equal to the Series S 4 tFlops...its a new architecture GPU and the CPU is exactly same as the Series X and is a quantum leap from previous gen. What wre you talking about?
tkscz
Member
From what I can tell the Series S is still more powerful than the XBX
10GBs of GDDR6 is much better than 12GBs of GDDR5.
RDNA architecture from 2020 can run circles around GCN architecture from 2017, a 2TF difference isn't enough to change that
ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN THE JAGUAR CPU, let alone a fucking Zen2 based CPU that has 8 cores and 16 threads.
The series S will be significantly easier to port down to than porting down from the XSX to the XBX just based on architecture alone.
10GBs of GDDR6 is much better than 12GBs of GDDR5.
RDNA architecture from 2020 can run circles around GCN architecture from 2017, a 2TF difference isn't enough to change that
ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN THE JAGUAR CPU, let alone a fucking Zen2 based CPU that has 8 cores and 16 threads.
The series S will be significantly easier to port down to than porting down from the XSX to the XBX just based on architecture alone.
Arkam
Member
I wonder what the production/availability rate will be for the XSS vs XSX. Assuming our internet sleuthing is correct, the XSS will be fairly cheap and the XSX might be expensive... it would make sense to have more XSS right? Esp when we consider there is not a major "next gen" game coming at launch. As long as the XSS plays CyberPunk, COD, etc better than the X1 it seems the most practical option.
Dr Bass
Member
First off, do you have data to back that up? What does "majority of average casual crowd" even mean. What is a casual? How do you measure that? PS3 beat 360 long term and was more expensive. PS2 beat everything and was cheaper. Gamecube was the cheapest of its gen and lost. Wii was a bit cheaper I think and dominated. But what is the commonality? All of the "winning" platforms had the software that people wanted.
So many theories being kicked around how Microsoft is going to rise from the ashes like a "Phoenix from Arizona", but the thing constantly ignored is the fact they are getting bad press, and bad numbers in terms of the online interest. They slashed prices on Xbox One like crazy and that still did nothing. So how is a low price on Xbox Series S going to move that needle? Now you can play the same stuff as on the One with your new system, but for maybe 300 bucks?
Sorry, but your facts aren't facts.
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WatDat
Banned
Don’t bother. He doesn’t get it. (And likely won’t be getting an Xbox anyways.)