Xbox Series S [XBSS] [Release November 10 2020]

Is there a reason why MS doesn't just forces 2xSSAA on (unenhanced) xbox one titles even on xbox one x? This should be possible for all we know.
Sometimes blanket supersampling can create unintended issues. Like, if a HUD scales with resolution, or on screen text being rendered at fixed pixel heights, stuff like that. It depends on how the supersampeling is applied, and how the game is composed. You can see these oddities in older PC games run at higher than expected resolution, or sometimes even modern games run at lower than expected resolutions. Or even just strange resolutions. My wife at a windows tablet that has a 1080p screen but an intel GPU. She tried to play Titan Quest on it (an older game that still gets patched often) and I set up a custom 540p resolution. There are HUD elements that just don't render on screen at that resolution. But they do at 480p, so it isn't just a problem of not enough pixels. There are even games on PC that get weird if virtual super resolution is enabled, even if the game isn't run at higher than native resolution.

I would imagine there would have to be a fair amount of testing to ensure supersampeling worked, and then it becomes an issue of paying for that to happen vs it being "good enough" for most people. And who knows, maybe the custome scaler chip has some secret AI powered laggless edge detect antialiasing built into it.
 
Official dimensions...

Eh53BpeWkAUHN03


1.9 kg for our non-US brethren.

10.83in x 2.56n x 5.94in for my US brethren.

Tommy McClain
 
Given MS lack of showing games worthy of upgrading for, the XSS actually has more reasons than XSX.

General factors that are the same between XSS and XSX like loading times, higher stable fps and resolutions, the XSS has some very good reasons beyond those.

People upgrading to XSS will be majority of XO owners, and the performance of that console is really bad now. Not so PS4, 4Pro and 1X.
So for those people current gen boosts and ability to play patched and next gen games can be reason to finally upgrade.

But showing some next gen worthy games would help both XSS and XSX. They've been so focused on saying why you don't need to upgrade, that's peoples takes away.
 
People upgrading to XSS will be majority of XO owners, and the performance of that console is really bad now.

I do wonder if they have data over the years since OneS/OneX to show that a significant number of users don't have their consoles hooked up to a 4K screen.

But showing some next gen worthy games would help both XSS and XSX. They've been so focused on saying why you don't need to upgrade, that's peoples takes away.
Yeah, it's been kinda garbage. Lots of their 1st party are going to be years away from putting out anything too, which makes it that much harder to make the case for upgrading apart from smoothing out current experiences in the general sense. Maybe that's all they need for the folks wanting to play COD or Fortnite or Destiny 2 though. :|
 
People upgrading to XSS will be majority of XO owners, and the performance of that console is really bad now.

There might well be specific games where the One S is outright bad but I'm not sure what they are. When I have free access to the living room TV I quite often pick up a pad and play on my daughter's OneS. I could go and play on my reasonably spec'd PC instead but it's just nice to chill out on the sofa. Sofa+TV absolves a lot of image quality issues that would bug the hell out of me on the PC. Or it might just be due to the red wine that goes with the kids being in bed.

Don't get me wrong though, I'm hankering for more 60fps games recently in a way I didn't expect. Mainly it's due to playing a few higher frame rate titles on Gamepass.

I do wonder if they have data over the years since OneS/OneX to show that a significant number of users don't have their consoles hooked up to a 4K screen.

They might, or they can just visit a few friends houses who have 4k TVs. They'd be disgusted enough by their lousy setups to know that 4k output is totally wasted on a good % of the population.
 
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There might well be specific game were the One S is outright bad but I'm not sure what they are. When I have free access to the living room TV quite often pick up a pad and play on my daughter's OneS. I could go and play on my reasonably spec'd PC instead but it's just nice to chill out on the sofa. Sofa+TV absolves a lot of image quality issues that would bug the hell out of me on the PC. Or it might just be due to the red wine that goes with the kids being in bed.
I was thinking more performance than image quality. But IQ isn't stella either.
Do except your points though.

But performance hasn't been great, and if they get to play it with buttery smooth fps, xbox low latency path, etc, for the price they may think it's worth it.

They might, or they can just visit a few friends houses who have 4k TVs. They'd be disgusted enough by their lousy setups to know that 4k output is totally wasted on a good % of the population.
MS has telemetry coming out of their ears about everything.
Trouble is half the time I don't usually expect them to interpret all the data correctly
 
I think one of the things MS learned with the One X is that not nearly as many people cared about 4K as they originally thought would.

This may have been what spawned the XSS. Why waste TF on going from HD to 4K and make these people pay an extra $200?
 
I think one of the things MS learned with the One X is that not nearly as many people cared about 4K as they originally thought would.

This may have been what spawned the XSS. Why waste TF on going from HD to 4K and make these people pay an extra $200?
Then what would be the point of XSX?

My conclusion may be similar to you but get there differently.
I think the 1X showed them that there was a market for the high end, the 1S showed that there was also a market for lower end also.
 
What are the chances MS repeats what they did with the xbox one and bump the specs of the cheap unit a year or so into its lifetime?
I think greater than 50%.
Only $100 more for something more than 2x the power with more memory/harddisk doesnt make the xbox one series S seem like the best deal (sure if its all you can afford) but compared to the diskless ps5 its only got price going for it. I doubt sony will alter their specs (except larger ssd's)
 
It's 0%. They'll instead come out with a Series X|S 2024 edition. They already kept clocks and cu counts low enough to hit low prices.

That would be an all digital X when they can do a die shrink? And then an X RT or something for the suped up version.

I am not sure how they can have a better S when that's basically the current X.

I would assume they just price reduce the X when they can and make the Series S the $100 black Friday blow out machine the current all digital S has been.

It's clear price is massively important to their strategy, as is Xcloud where 1080p is perfect and will be for a good while.

The One S only had a modest bump to allow for overhead in processing HDR, it was not an upgrade as such to regular performance although they did not hold it back.
 
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