Wednesday, September 9th 2020

Microsoft Reveals Final Pricing and Availability of Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S

by
btarunr
 Discuss (63 Comments)
Microsoft today finalized the pricing and announced availability dates of its next-generation Xbox entertainment systems. The company has segmented its console lineup to target two price points, with the mighty Xbox Series X being priced at USD $499 (ERP), and the newly announced Xbox Series S at $299 (ERP). Both models will be available from November 10, 2020, but pre-orders for both begin from September 22. The Xbox Series X covers the complete next-generation hardware feature-set of Microsoft's next-gen console, offering 4K UHD gaming, and an optical disc drive for physical media.

The Xbox Series S, on the other hand, is an all-digital console, meaning that the games you own are downloaded onto its local storage to play, there's no optical disc drive. The Xbox Series S further offers 1440p gameplay at frame-rates of up to 120 FPS, or 4K UHD gameplay upscaled from a lower resolution, or high refresh-rate 1440p/1080p gameplay. You still do get the full DirectX 12 Ultimate feature-set. The NVMe SSD-based local storage for the Xbox Series S is 512 GB, half that of the Xbox Series X.

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63 Comments on Microsoft Reveals Final Pricing and Availability of Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S

#51
Valantar
TheLostSwedeWell, it's presumably disabled in software, you know how these things goes...
That might be, though given that even the XSS undoubtedly is able to output 4k (upscaled games or streaming - there are no 1440p TVs, after all, and TV scalers really aren't trustworthy for gaming) the decode block needs to be fully enabled. The encode block might of course be partially disabled, but then it would IMO make more sense to capture the native 1440p signal before upscaling than to capture an upscaled signal anyhow. That would also mean smaller file sizes for local recording or easier streaming for anything live, so either way, I don't see a downside if there's no native 4k encoding in the XSS.
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#52
Flanker
Reminds me how the original PlayStation was announced for 299 at E3 in 1995
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#53
F-man4
I don’t know who cares but I don’t care.

1) XBOX game = Windows Store game, no exclusive.

2) RTX3080 overwhelms all consoles.
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#54
kayjay010101
F-man4I don’t know who cares but I don’t care.

1) XBOX game = Windows Store game, no exclusive.

2) RTX3080 overwhelms all consoles.
The RTX 3080 is also almost 3x more than the series S and requires a full PC to actually do anything
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#55
Luminescent
AnarchoPrimitivWow, I might end up getting a series X. Right now I've got a 2700x/5700xt build, and I was probably going to upgrade to Zen3 and Big Navi, but I might just get the Xbox Series X and hold off at least 6 months on the PC upgrade until hardware prices come down or there are some discounts, especially considering my PC is good enough for the non-gaming stuff I use it for, plus it's easier to use a console and a television to play games with my niece than it is on PC.
This is exactly the fear Nvidia had and has, they are not competing with Amd anymore but more with consoles and what they bring, cheap hardware and lots of games properly made, it's not like tomorrow or the next month there will be a massive line up of games on PC that needs RTX 3080, people will wait and wait and wait until they will wonder if they will ever need a high end GPU, maybe a cheap 100-200$ GPU is more than enough or not at all if the old one is still running.
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#56
TheLostSwede
News Editor
ValantarThat might be, though given that even the XSS undoubtedly is able to output 4k (upscaled games or streaming - there are no 1440p TVs, after all, and TV scalers really aren't trustworthy for gaming) the decode block needs to be fully enabled. The encode block might of course be partially disabled, but then it would IMO make more sense to capture the native 1440p signal before upscaling than to capture an upscaled signal anyhow. That would also mean smaller file sizes for local recording or easier streaming for anything live, so either way, I don't see a downside if there's no native 4k encoding in the XSS.
Apparently a certain group of console gamers have 1440p displays that they game on.
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#57
Valantar
TheLostSwedeApparently a certain group of console gamers have 1440p displays that they game on.
Oh, absolutely. But this is first and foremost positioned as a "next-gen console for the masses", not "next-gen console for people with 1440p displays". It will serve them too, and serve them well at that (especially if there's some hitherto unknown FreeSync-over-HDMI 2.0 compatibility included, but even then it will work nicely at up to 120Hz), but given the price and positioning the main audience is people not willing to spend that much money on a console - which is a demographic skewing more towards the average person and less towards the enthusiast gamer.
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#58
ValenOne
The effort for Xbox Series S's Ryzen Zen 2 with RDNA 2 IGP APU could have been allocated for PC market's Zen 2 with RDNA 2 IGP.
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#59
mechtech
ValantarI would be very surprised if the encode/decode block has a reduced featureset compared to the XSX. The area savings would be far, far too small to justify the cost of not just copying the design wholesale.

In theory? Sure. It's an X86-based AMD SoC, and the Xbox OS is essentially a fork of Windows 10. But it lacks a PC BIOS, there's no way to get a bootloader on there, there's no way to get it to boot off USB for installing the OS, etc. So in practice? No way, Jose. Never happening. Given how heavily subsidized consoles are, allowing running ordinary Windows on these consoles would essentially tank the PC market - why buy a gaming PC for $1000 or $1500 when you can get a machine essentially as capable, running all the same software, for the price of the GPU in the PC?
I figured as much, just for those reasons you listed. It would be nice though it they put that mobo into a laptop jacket and sold it for $1000 even.............one can dream.
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#60
sliderider
Not excited at all, except that it forces Sony to rethink their pricing structure. I'd rather buy a new video card for my PC, since all the XBox games will also release on PC. There's no point to buying an XBox at all. The Series S isn't even as much of a bargain as it appears, because you lose one of Microsoft's biggest selling points, which is disc based backwards compatibility. If you want to keep playing your old games, you have to keep your old console or repurchase all your old games digitally. It doesn't take many game purchases to eat up the $200 you were trying to save by buying the Series S vs the Series X, and you'll be stuck playing them at 1440p instead of 4K. You can't even argue "What about GamePass?" because PC has GamePass now, too, and xCloud will even let you play on your Android device like you can with Stadia. Why buy an XBox? I just don't know.
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#61
F-man4
kayjay010101The RTX 3080 is also almost 3x more than the series S and requires a full PC to actually do anything
Limited money buys limited resolution & framerate.
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#62
Valantar
F-man4Limited money buys limited resolution & framerate.
While that's true, building a properly 1440p-capable PC at $300 is still impossible. So the value proposition of these consoles is nonetheless excellent.
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#63
r9
Give me that Series X all digital for $400 God damn it!
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