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Xbox have really knocked it out the park with the Series S imo

NullZ3r0

Banned
For an ERP of £250/$299, The Xbox Series S offers a really great deal for people planning to upgrade this year.

Make what you will of the rumoured 4TFs it holds, but the Series S if the full leaked video is anything to go by, offers support for 120FPS at 1440p, 4K upscaling for games, 4K media playback, support for DirectX raytracing, and a custom NVME 512GB SSD.

That is a great deal for £250, they're obviously planning to make up losses with this by it being discless, but this means for many people, Next Gen is not so unaffordable on launch, I mean this will retail for the same price as you can get a PS4 Slim on Argos on it's own atm, so it to me anyway, screams of great pricing.

Now obviously Sony will have to respond, they love to undercut/rival competitors price wise so I can see them retailing the PS5 Digital Edition for around £300 which would offer them a bit more leeway with customers, as despite how beloved Sony are and the vast majority of people want to get a PS5 over an Xbox Series X, this Series S will appeal to almost every casual buyer and parent as the affordable way to entertain for many years to come.

Me personally? I will be getting this and a PS5 as this means I can experience Gamepass and all it has to offer for a very affordable price, whilst still getting my preferred choice down the line in the PS5 (when HZD II comes out will be when I pounce).

Series-S.png
The loyal customer is a myth. Most people bought a PS4 last gen because it was cheaper.

I also disagree that Sony undercuts the competition. This is false. They were more expensive than Dreamcast and Xbox 360.

The cheaper Sony console just happened to cost less than the competition.

This time around they won't be.
 

Ma-Yuan

Member
This was the most boring uninteresting unveiling ever . . . I mean I have no interest in a weaker version of a console anyway. Just buy less games to save some money to get an X later . . . Why would anyone even consider this.

This is 3,5 full price games which you can get later on sale to have enough money for X.
 

NullZ3r0

Banned
Digital is their only way of getting close to this pricepoint, but it still won't be quite there.
The digital will most likely be the $499 version. This is the version Sony wants you to buy. The disc version isn't just the Digital with a disc slot. The body is shaped different and it even ships with a different base. Sony will likely price these around $549.
 

Aurelius

Member
yup if anyone is hesitant about getting a new TV or just doesn't wanna then this will be perfect. £250 and you've got yourself a next gen console. crazy good value.
Ideally I would like to keep my TV (Panasonic Plasma) another 2-3 year. The series S sounds like a good way to bridge that gap. I can play some older games through gamepass and new releases like Yakuza 7 and Cyberpunk 2077 with up scaled graphics, better framerate and hopefully with a lot less noise than on my PS4 Pro.
 
The digital will most likely be the $499 version. This is the version Sony wants you to buy. The disc version isn't just the Digital with a disc slot. The body is shaped different and it even ships with a different base. Sony will likely price these around $549.

What's this based on? Why do we expect that the PS5 will cost more than XSX
 
100-150€ too expensive to be "lets get this as 2nd/3rd system for few games ps5 doesnt have"

Just marketing talk, 120fps means nothing special when graphics can be super low and its niche for consoles anyway.

Maybe good for casuals but I dont see gamers that want next gen/ps5 to care much about this as it is too expensive to be some kind of impulse buy and it is too weak to feel true next gen.

Even if series x would be 299€ I would not get it before sales
 
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Everyone is convinced that the PS5 will have some ultra exotic/ ultra expensive cooling solution. Is that true? Who knows? But we will learn a lot soon.

It will. It's liquid metal cooling, but that's just exotic for consoles such things already exist in the PC space. But it's not $49 worth of cooling. Where Sony has spent more on their SSD and I/O solution Microsoft has spent more on their APU and faster RAM (10GB worth).
 
It will be interesting to see how it performs and how it sells. I wonder how the rest of the pricing shakes out with XSX and the PS5 variants. My gut feeling tells me that this would be a really good purchase for the average console gamer going into next-gen but I don't think it's going to do much to steal PlayStation customers. Too much ecosystem inertia in the digital age. But the gaming pie is always growing and this box seems like an amazing value.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
So will games that were enhanc

It is.
[/QUOTE]
Not on my feed, but Sexual Assault, Always Believe the victim, California wildfires, Woojin and Venture Brothers certainly are trending.
 

KiNeMz

Banned
This is a back compat box. That's all I would use it for. And for that I may pick one up. If Sony doesn't let me play MGS and silent hill on ps5 I will grab this.
 

Montauk

Member
Only 512gb of storage is a big mistake. Modern warfare is 200gb by itself, if Cold war is close to that in size, then people are going to need to upgrade storage when they buy this thing.

If there was one component not to skimp on it's storage.

Looking at you too Sony.

One of the reasons modern games are so big is the slow speed of HDDs. You have to place the same assets many times across the drive so you can access them in the game engine at the time you need them.

With much much faster memory to access (the new SSDs) you don't need to do this as you pull up the assets you need so much quicker.

Game installs should be getting far more efficient and stop us from seeing larger installs than now and perhaps smaller installs.

There are articles about this and I'm sure both Sony and MS are working hard to find ways to reduce install sizes.
 

Nikana

Go Go Neo Rangers!
Very interesting strategy. Its refreshing to see how each of the big 3 are focusing on different things.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
One of the reasons modern games are so big is the slow speed of HDDs. You have to place the same assets many times across the drive so you can access them in the game engine at the time you need them.

With much much faster memory to access (the new SSDs) you don't need to do this as you pull up the assets you need so much quicker.

Game installs should be getting far more efficient and stop us from seeing larger installs than now and perhaps smaller installs.

There are articles about this and I'm sure both Sony and MS are working hard to find ways to reduce install sizes.

I don't doubt it, but when you start adding in 4k textures and game installs for xb360 games for you Gamepass sub, it adds up.
 
All digital console with a tiny storage capacity. I already think the 840 something SSD for the discless PS5 is too small.
 
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RoboFu

One of the green rats
I will get one for sure as my current set up i have a xbox X in one room and an xbox s in another. Thats a huge thing for me as a dad with kids that the xbox auto syncs when you start a g ame no matter what device you are on. I can just leave the room and go to the other.
 
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Vawn

Banned
People are taking the resolution and framerate here seriously? Still? Have we not learned these numbers mean nothing apart from the software?

120FPS Pong? Sure. 120 FPS Assassin's Creed Valhalla? No. The Series X runs it at 30 FPS. Developers choose what to prioritize no matter how weak or strong hardware is.
 

BigLee74

Member
Only 512gb of storage is a big mistake. Modern warfare is 200gb by itself, if Cold war is close to that in size, then people are going to need to upgrade storage when they buy this thing.

MW is 100gb on Xbox, and that's everything... campaign, MP, Spec Ops and Warzone.

Your point stands though. 512gb is light, and will involve some shuffling. But it's no big deal. I reckon I rotate 2 or 3 big games at a time, and it's something people can live with for 250 quid.
 

Ozrimandias

Member
Very nice price
Nice Desing (i like more the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S than the ps5 in terms of desing)
Nice Specs

In fact, as a Playstation owner for decades, this is the first time that an Xbox console caught my attention.

The exclusives are the only thing that keeps me on Playstation, other than that, I jump to that ship
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
512GB, 4TFLOP, 10GB RAM for 300€? Not even a disc drive for the "most compatible console ever" (don't even think about playing your old OG XBOX, 360 or One discs. Such a scam.

Welcome to 2010 again.

Yes, indeed, welcome to 2010 again if you are still using disks, its 2020 now, its time to move on. As far as the hardware goes, for $299, its a home run. Still thinking people should actually consider its real world performance before deciding its underpowered. Its targeted at xbox one and base ps4 owners, and it mops the floor with those machines.
 
MW is 100gb on Xbox, and that's everything... campaign, MP, Spec Ops and Warzone.

Your point stands though. 512gb is light, and will involve some shuffling. But it's no big deal. I reckon I rotate 2 or 3 big games at a time, and it's something people can live with for 250 quid.

But to put things in perspective, Xboxes best generation was the one where they sold a HDD-less xbox 360.

So although we the hardcore may not like this, the mass market will.
 
512GB, 4TFLOP, 10GB RAM for 300€? Not even a disc drive for the "most compatible console ever" (don't even think about playing your old OG XBOX, 360 or One discs. Such a scam.

Welcome to 2010 again.

A scam?

  • The console is a choice and clearly labeled for what it is
  • Most kids today are digital same as phone games and iPad games. To many kids physical is weird
  • Hey that's SSD is only a little smaller than the PS5...
  • Good entry point for most mainstream gamers that alternate between Madden/FIFA and COD and Fortnite
 
So what happens next gen when there are only discless models? Do you give up gaming?
By that time (PS6 and Xbox whatever) wil be all digital cous in 6-7 years in the future the internet will be good enough for most people that streaming games will be running nearly perfect😉
 
Wish it had more storage but I'm sure that was one of the things that helped them keep the price down.

Don't forget that you can store next gen games on a usb hdd, you just can't play them off of it. So you can swap the games you want to play on and off the system's memory from usb if you don't want to get the Seagate memory card.

I might just got XSS to begin with and once my Gamepass Ultimate subscription runs out next fall, upgrade to XSX on All Access and pass the XSS down to my oldest son.
 

MastaKiiLA

Member
I hope no one takes this as a troll, as I'm too old for console warring, and already made a post in another thread noting that I found the price and design intriguing. However, in that post I also noted that I would be more impressed if this provided a significant improvement over the XB1X. Prior to the official video, I was uncertain of where it would land performance-wise. Now that we know certain things they say it can do, doesn't this appear more like a replacement for the XB1X, which will end up being delisted in the not-so-distant future? The emphasis on cross-gen seems to place the XSS as the ideal replacement for that system. They all play the same games, and with 1440p as the target resolution, this feels like it'll fall into that same performance tier, with support for some additional features.

Much is still yet to be revealed about the components, but I'm not currently convinced that this represents anything more than repackaging the mid-gen step of XB1X as a next-gen console, in order to attract those gamers who would not have wanted an XB1X, when juxtaposed with an XSX at the high-end. But repackaging that tier of system as a new product, with the newer branding, gives them a second crack at it. Is this too cynical a view of things?

For me, the next-gen is still PS5 and XSS, and full-disclosure, I'm only getting a PS5. I have nothing against MS, at all, and find the console wars to be idiotic. I think the design and price of the XSS are good, and their Game Pass strategy is also quite interesting. However, I don't know how casuals will interpret the XSS in the market, given how mobile phones have softened higher pricepoints for technology, and how we have yet to see what the visual difference will be between XSS and XSX games. I look forward to seeing more.
 

AGRacing

Member
A knockout and a great machine for the price. 1440p will probably be "dynamic" in most AAA stuff but that's OK. 120fps.. Cant wait to see what theyre talking about there. RDNA2 is fascinating...

Anyway - This will suit a lot of folks.
 

soulbait

Member
512 gb too to reach this price point ?
even if it's cheaper now ssd comes at a cost.
no bd player is bad move imo (and it kills half the messaging so far)

Out of all of my friends, I am the only one who actually still buys physical movies. They all either rent/buy through a streaming service or just wait for the movie to come onto the streaming services they subscribe to. The lack of a BD player is not a big deal for many people.
 

Aidah

Member
Seems alright, although that amount of storage might be annoying for most users down the line. Depending on the price of the storage expansion you might be better off buying the better deal in Series X instead. Personally I think Series X is the better value regardless, especially long run (if it really is $499).
 
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soulbait

Member
Can't disagree. I mean I hope I'm not that stupid, me, you most people on this forum are enthusiasts XboxS is not targeting 90% of this forum population.

Microsoft strategy is to go after middle-level gamers. These are people who don't quite game on mobile phones but are also not chasing mega-trends and obsess about next gen tech like ray tracing. It's not that transparent.

However even if I remove myself from the equation I wonder how truly big this market really is? Because we know that more young people just game on handhelds or phones. Xbox isn't chasing that as Series S is not portable. Older generations and poeple with some money can easily justify spending 1-2k on getting an entry level TCL 4k HDR TV and pay a 200$ premium for a full-blown next-gen console. I don't want to derail this thread because we have a separate discussion on Gamepass but clearly both GP and XS are targeting the same value-prop market. The question is: does this niche even exist, can you move people into that niche and how much profit can you get out of it?

The doubt comes from the fact that here we're debating 200$ discount on a console that should last a generation yet people are conditioned to spend 100s of dollars on microtransactions, full-games cost 100$ now (I take AC Valhalla Gold Edition), people have no qualms to raid stores for new Zelda and Mario for full price. Compared to that is there really a value in saving 200$ to get a smaller console and is 15$ a month a good subscription proposition for you target audience (as all MS exclusives will go there) considering AAA games like AC, FIFA, Madden - all mass-market franchises will not go on GP and will certainly look considerably better on a console worth 2 full-prices games more?

I don't have answers and I'm interested to see the answer but right now that market niche is not appearing as clear to me as Xbox Execs.

Young people only play on mobile? Tell that to my young nephews. The only reason why kids are playing more on mobile than consoles is because parents cannot afford to buy their kids both a phone and a new console. Pricing the XSS at this range opens up the opportunity more for parents to be able to afford next gen for their younger kids.
 

martino

Member
Out of all of my friends, I am the only one who actually still buys physical movies. They all either rent/buy through a streaming service or just wait for the movie to come onto the streaming services they subscribe to. The lack of a BD player is not a big deal for many people.
don't change part of the messaging is play 4 generations of xbox games
you could argue they will probably sell them all digitally but it really isn't the same imo but it's probably also because
tenor.gif
 
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