Xbox officially announce Series S design and pricing, plus leaked specs and release date
Last night, information on the cutdown/cheaper next generation Xbox Series S leaked, with design and pricing oficially confirmed by Xbox this morning.
We know almost everything there is to know about the flagship next generation Xbox Series X due to release this fall. Xbox Series S has until now been shrouded in mystery. Design, pricing, specification and a promo video leaked last night, with Xbox officially confirming the design and pricing on Twitter this morning.
Design
Prior to yesterday, we expected the design to be based on the tall Xbox Series X, with a shrunken, more cubed shape. Instead design turned out to be quite different to initial predictions. Xbox report Series S as “the smallest Xbox ever”. Series S looks to be about as tall as the Series X, at around a third the volume. The white coating holds a large circular vent, rather than the chamber atop the Series X.
Pricing
- Xbox Series X will sell for $499 or $35/month with an Xbox All Access financing option.
- Xbox Series S will sell for $299 or $25/month with an Xbox All Access financing option.
This $200 price different will be very appealing to the casual gamer market who want to play next generation games and don’t care about resolution or frame rates.
PlayStation are yet to release their pricing for PlayStation 5 or PS5 Digital Edition, but these are expected to be $499 and $399/$450 respectively.
Series X will support 4K gaming at 60fps (with some games capable of 120fps). Much like the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, the Series S is designed to be a next generation Xbox, without the disc drive. However, unlike the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition, Series S is thought to have slightly limited performance, with a cutdown CPU and GPU, hence the PlayStation 5 Digital Edition’s predicted price at around $100-150 more.
Leaks
The rest of the information such as technical specification and release date is only speculation.
The only confirmed information we have on specs is the tagline in the promo shot above “Next gen performance”. This morning, this promo video leaked following the announcement, showing the size against the Series X and performance specification.
These specs listed include:
- All-digital
- 1440p at up to 120fps
- DirectX ray tracing
- Variable rate shading
- Variable refresh rate
- Ultra-low latency
- Custom 512 SSD
- 4K streaming media playback
- 4K upscaling for games
No word yet on options for upgrading the fairly small 512 SSD. Series X has a custom port at the rear of the console for expanding storage that we’d like to see make its way onto the Series S, or to make internal upgrades possible much like the PS5.
Release date is thought to be 10th November, the same as the Series X. This is yet to be confirmed by Xbox.
As subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass become more popular, thought of as ‘the Nexflix of gaming’, discs will increasingly become less relevant. Most importantly, aside from whose console is better than whose, giving gamers the choice of four consoles is great for us consumers.