Should put this whole issue to rest (for a while, at least 😉).

  • I don’t think it was a mistake, it brought next gen gaming to people that can’t afford, or don’t need the highest spec machines. I have a series S so I can play Xbox games with my son, I also have a gaming PC and steam deck. The price of the S allowed me to justify buying this, but I wasn’t about to drop the dough on an X just to play a few Xbox games

    • It’s less powerful than an Xbox One X. I think the problem is that they didn’t really think through what a console generational leap would actually consist of.

          • And do you think that would have panned out better if the cheaper console option wasn’t available? Not to mention it would only leave them with the console that shared a lot of the same components as the PS5 during supply shortages as well.

                • Yes, thank you!
                  Microsoft has historically never been profitably selling consoles, which is certainly part of their shift towards different business models, including Game Pass and a focus on more than just Xbox, but PC and Cloud as well. They don’t really have much of a financial incentive to sell consoles for that sake alone, they have to get people to subscribe to Game Pass and/or buy games (possibly digitally whenever possible) and the Series S is their best console for that, as the consumer is very much locked in.

                  • Game Pass does include PC gamers, which is why they’re probably more interested in opening up that service to more people with a cheap console SKU than to sell Xbox consoles, likely because outselling Sony by doing the same thing Sony is doing is a very steep hill to climb.

      •  masterspace   ( @masterspace@lemmy.ca ) 
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        1 year ago

        It’s less powerful than an Xbox One X

        Lmao, bruh, no one who has played games on both would ever claim that. It has slightly more raw graphical compute power while having a drastically weaker CPU, slower SSD, slower memory, and slower overall throughput.

        • It has faster memory than the Series S. More importantly, it has more RAM. A few improvements here and there doesn’t make the Series S a real next-gen console.

          •  masterspace   ( @masterspace@lemmy.ca ) 
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            1 year ago

            As someone who has a One X, a Series S, and a Series X, I can assure you that you have no idea what you’re talking about.

            The One X doesn’t get used anymore and the Series S gets used ballpark more often than the series X. Pretty much all games play a very comparable experience on it compared to the series X, something that cannot be said about the One X.