Xbox Series S [XBSS] (Lockhart) General Rumors and Speculation *spawn*

[McHuj]

Other than the two tone look, I really like this idea. I do hope we get a teardown of it and a full detailed spec dump as well.

I don't think it will hold back next gen at all and I think it's a real smart play. I bet around next year's holiday season, we'll have $199 bundles.

 

[iroboto]

Other than the two tone look, I really like this idea. I do hope we get a teardown of it and a full detailed spec dump as well.

I don't think it will hold back next gen at all and I think it's a real smart play. I bet around next year's holiday season, we'll have $199 bundles.

Fan grill is a special material so that @orangpelupa's cat and others won't sit on it.

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

Fan grill is a special material so that @orangpelupa's cat and others won't sit on it.

Razor wire?

 

[mpg1]

I like the look of it. Nice price. But ahhh that 512GB storage is really the downside with this...you'd basically need to get an expansion card (I'm assuming it has an expansion slot).

 

[cheapchips]

I like the look of it. Nice price. But ahhh that 512GB storage is really the downside with this...you'd basically need to get an expansion card (I'm assuming it has an expansion slot).

An expansion slot is surely a given?

Not sure if I'd want to go with the cheaper external drive option for BC titles. Load times will be even more annoying if titles on the SSD have very little loading. I'd assume the quick switching will work across title regardless of where they're stored though, so many it's not that bad.

 

[Tkumpathenurple]

I like the look of it. Nice price. But ahhh that 512GB storage is really the downside with this...you'd basically need to get an expansion card (I'm assuming it has an expansion slot).

Sort of, but it's a sensible compromise based on the goals MS appear to have.

I think it can be regarded as a streaming box which can also locally play anything from the XBoxOne and the... XBox Series. Which is, of course, distinct from the XBox series, given that the XBox series includes all XBox consoles, including both of the XBox Series consoles.

FFS MS.

Anyway, I think the Series S, within the first year or so, needs to be able to stream from a local Series X. It would make the Series S a really solid option for dotting a few around the house.

 

[Eolirin]

I like the look of it. Nice price. But ahhh that 512GB storage is really the downside with this...you'd basically need to get an expansion card (I'm assuming it has an expansion slot).

Well, it won't be downloading 4k textures, and this gen has hardware accelerated decompression so it may not be as much of a problem as it seems on paper.

 

[fehu]

I like it, reminds me of Ouya.
What? The shape is completely different!
Yes, but Ouya was destined to fail from the beginning too.

 

[BoardBonobo]

Well lets see what the pricing is for PS5 before making that assumption right? The mobile market is a massive market where lots of people play on ipad. And that's not exactly a cheap device either. Ipad Pros and Ipads in general are not cheap. Surface is not a cheap device either. But these devices are being snatched up and mobile gaming market is the biggest market there is.

So if you're going to make a new product category, you'd compare it to the category it's going up against, which should not be PS5 in this case. XSX is competing against PS5.

Told you they'd never take the risk of consigning the Xbox cheap to insta death in the mobile market. It was always going to be a box under the TV.

 

[tunafish]

So is it really that much of a next generation console compared to One X?

It has a modern CPU & storage. Also, while the raw numbers are lower in the GPU, RDNA2 is much more efficient per gflop/s than GCN.

Honestly I think this is a terrible idea. It cheapens the brand and won't really have an audience. It won't get much, if any notable media attention and any marketing efforts put into are money that could have been spent promoting the flagship.

I really want to hear third-party developers thoughts on this...

I very firmly disagree. This is the first time anyone has done a two-tier launch right. The key point is that the architecture of the consoles is identical, and the CPU power is the same. This means that you can do a two-tier game by resolution/refresh rate scaling alone. Just design for 4k on the XsX, and at the end cut resolution to 1440/1080 depending on which gets you closer to your frametime targets for the smaller console. Also cut texture quality (and maybe some finer lod levels on models) until you fit into memory, and you're golden.

They will have very little marketing spend for the smaller console. It will just be sitting there right next to the big one in every store, and will be marketed pretty much by it's price tag alone. They will effectively make as much or more money (all digital probably means no used games) out of game sales on the small machine as they do on the big one, so they won't mind which one you pick, and they get to show off the splashier 4k graphics wherever they market them.

Only 512gb SSD for an All-Digital console...and it doesn't seem to have a port for extra storage.

On XsX, the port is on the backside. I expect this to be true here too.

There's no way it doesn't have the exact same, tiny little port for extra storage. It's easy money for MS.

A million times this. A NVME connector is cheap. Even though they are pinching pennies building these things, they will definitely recoup the expenses in whatever tiny fee they levy from drive manufacturers for calling themselves Xbox-compatible. They'd have to be Jack Tramiel-level self-defeatingly stupid to not include it.

If an Unreal Engine game appeared at 1440p on Series X where does that leave the other three boxes?

Somewhere between 720p and 1080p on the XsS, and probably nowhere on the others because they can't hope to run it.

 

[Strange]

So we apparently have settled that 4 TFLOPS is enough for a next gen console to run with all these features, at 299.
I feel like archiving this thread and revisiting it in 3 months when we really see what it amounts to.

 

[BRiT]

So we apparently have settled that 4 TFLOPS is enough for a next gen console to run with all these features, at 299.
I feel like archiving this thread and revisiting it in 3 months when we really see what it amounts to.

What problem do you have with the alleged technical details of having 33% the GPU for targetting 25% of the workload? Or are you going by emotions only?

 

[iroboto]

Told you they'd never take the risk of consigning the Xbox cheap to insta death in the mobile market. It was always going to be a box under the TV.

Yea, I didn't think 299 was capable; so I figured if they couldn't, they should just go up.

 

[Strange]

https://forum.beyond3d.com/posts/2149389/

Just to be clear I expected that if the XBSS existed it would have to exist in the $300 region as posted above, so I appear to be spot on.

Being spot on doesn't mean I think their strategy makes sense, because it appears to me that by trying to check both boxes of "cheapest console" and "most powerful console", they have in fact also checked "most expensive console" and "least powerful console" too.

Of course in the future this allows Xbox to produce footage with the most powerful console for PR purposes, but they have been able to do that for 2~3 years already and I really don't see that working too well (and they haven't really done a good job doing that either in these few months).


It's just at the same time difficult for me to see how this product can differentiate itself significantly from the current Xbox One X.

What problem do you have with the alleged technical details of having 33% the GPU for targetting 25% of the workload? Or are you going by emotions only?

Oh so we're suddenly declaring that all games for XBSX run at 4K and XBSS runs at 1080p?
So if along comes a XBSX game that has to target 1440p (and we sure will) we'll be expecting it to run on the XBSS at 720p? yikes?

 

[AzBat]

It's just at the same time difficult for me to see how this product can differentiate itself significantly from the current Xbox One X.

People who bought Xbox One X(which has been discontinued now for a month or more?) are going to be buying the Series X. One X owners are more likely not price sensitive.

Xbox One S owners -> Xbox Series S
Xbox One X owners -> Xbox Series X

Tommy McClain

 

[Strange]

People who bought Xbox One X(which has been discontinued now for a month or more?) are going to be buying the Series X. One X owners are more likely not price sensitive.

Xbox One S owners -> Xbox Series S
Xbox One X owners -> Xbox Series X

Tommy McClain

So what has stopped them from buying a discounted XBox One X these past few months for a similar price?

 

[AzBat]

So what has stopped them from buying a discounted XBox One X these past few months for a similar price?

You're really going to compare a customer who waited almost 3 years after the One X shipped to get it at a discount(& also knows it's discontinued) to somebody who's gotta have the Series S 2-months before it ships at full retail price? LOL They are not the same customer. Nope.

Tommy McClain

 

[iroboto]

So what has stopped them from buying a discounted XBox One X these past few months for a similar price?

I didn't even think you could buy a X1X anymore. IIRC that went out of stock at least a month ago.

 

[BRiT]

Friendly reminder that the scaling discussion exists here: https://forum.beyond3d.com/threads/the-scalability-and-evolution-of-game-engines-spawn.61872/

 

[goonergaz]

What would be an equivalent PC setup regarding CPU and GPU? Just a rough ball-park as I've been asked by someone thinking of upgrading vs getting the XSS.

Ignore the SSD part, just the GPU and CPU please.