So the worst secret in gaming has finally leaked. $299 and digital only. Seems like a great price for game pass/xcloud people. My biggest question for it is how they handle backwards compatibility for people who have disc based 360 and Xbox One games. Hopefully Microsoft finally spills the beans officicially this week!

What are your thoughts?

Update! A comparison video has leaked as well. This thing is very small.

Another Update! Windows Central has done some reporting on the Series S and Series X.

$299 and $499 respectively. Also they are launching simultaneously on November 10th.

How much more powerful will this be than the $400 One X? And how the hell do they keep selling the One S for $249?

Seems like anybody who bought either got screwed this year. I mean in normal launch years, the old systems were always dirt cheap compared to the new one. ($50 GameCube, $250 Wii)

This would be like Sony releasing the PS3 at $299 yet still selling the PS2 PSX DVR thing for $399.

@lilnatureboyx: Only scrubbed through but did they give a release window for the xses?

Could imagine that coming early/mid next year (supply lines willing) and phasing out the xbone entirely. This fall/winter you can go xsex or xbones and next year your options become xsex or xses in the same way the xbonex was discontinued. Sticks to the idea of one S and one X at any given time.

But the xses gets announced when MS does prices so that they "win" even in the likely event Sony undercuts them on the x with their discless ps5.

As for physical media: Imagine the answer may be "sucks to be you, go get an x". But between this and the discless ps5 I could see both consoles having add-on drives with the appropriate keys to read the DRM and copy to the console's SSD.

Are we sure this is real?

1. I think it's hideous. That circular vent makes it look like a cheap boombox you'd pick up at Chuck-e-Cheese for like 1000 tickets or something.

2. Microsoft naming conventions continue to be confounding. With Playstation, it's straightforward PS-> PS2 -> PS3 -> PS4 ->PS5. With Microsoft, it's just letter-salad. Like, which one is this again? Every time they put out a new version, I just get more and more confused about which console is which generation, at which price, and where it falls on the power spectrum. I know it isn't their intention, but it always makes me feel like they are trying to pull one over on me.

Man, if the big boy Xbox Series X ends up being only a hundred bucks more than that, at $400? I might actually still be convinced to buy that thing this year.

Seems suspect to me. Someone got ahold of Series S pricing, but not Series X?

Edit: Never mind. Looks like X has leaked, too. $499. Launching Nov. 10.

Bombcast should be tasty

@nicksmi56: Yes, Windows Central has done some reporting on it here.

@hatking: Series X will be $499 unfortunately. The power difference must be stark.

IMO that Series S looks incredibly stupid (aesthetically) but the price is decent. There must be a real power differential.

While this waiting game of who goes first has been pretty stupid man I do feel kinda bad for Microsoft to have this leak. To hold back this long only to have it go out like that, kinda shitty.

Buy a Series S for $299 and then the first month of Game Pass for $10 and potentially have 100s of games at your fingers on launch day for $309.

Obviously these titles aren't all launch titles or anything, and there's download times associated. But still, that's amazing value, especially if you've skipped out on most of this generation.

Pity it looks like a speaker.

Looks like what I heard last week was true so the PS5 info is probably legit also $399 for no disk, $499 with disk and launching Nov 13.

@colonel_pockets: That seems more realistic. I think $400 would've fit into my budget a lot more easily, and I probably would've been able to be sold on that with just solid backwards compatibility and the promise of some interesting next gen stuff coming soon-ish. At $500, I feel like something really needs to spark some interesting in me in a way nothing has (on either platform) so far. I guess I've never been a day one guy anyway, but I was really prepared to get excited about AAA games again. Hopefully next year things get more exciting.

@lilnatureboyx: state of games today, man. I still personally see no reason to buy one of these for a few years. They seem worthless, for right now. Id love to be wrong, though. Seems like the best time (despite it being 2020) to build a PC if possible.

@travacado: I wish I could subscribe to this idea (not saying your wrong, there's ton of value) but just can't. This generation was such an in-betweener with all the remakes and remasters and collections that when they revealed these consoles, for me, it was quite possibly the most underwhelming reveal in a while.

Besides having all the old games with a paid subscription (like now), what are we getting in November thats truly new? A new.shiny box thats capable of doing a tad bit more than these systems now and then wait at least 2 years for the next big killer app? Then what, PS5 pro? Xbox Series B.I G Johnson?

It'll be fascinating to watch for sure though.

I think I'm gonna build a PC and jump in when things "get good".

Like @humanity said, I feel kind of bad for the people working on this to have it leak after such a long wait. The price isn't too surprising and should make it pretty appealing to families shopping for a new console during the holidays. I'm sure Sony would like to hit those €399/499 price points after this reveal, but can they afford to? I'm sure that Microsoft are loosing quite a bit of money selling the XSX for €499 and everything I've heard has made the PS5 seem quite pricey to manufacture too.

Oh and as far as the looks of the Series S are concerned, I mean it's fine I guess. They probably decided to accentuate the fan on it to stop people from stacking stuff directly on top of it. If it really is smaller than an Xbox One X, then the cooling in that thing must be very efficient and airflow a priority.

So at this point we have

XO - Xbox One

XOS - Xbox One S

XOX - Xbox One X

XSX - Xbox Series X

XSS - Xbox Series S

That really is some naming convention.

https://www.ign.com/articles/xbox-series-s-specs-leak-1440p-120fps-raytracing-512gb-ssd

Gives all the specs and includes the pitch video for this thing.

@relyt55: I mean, you are definitely not going to meet the machine’s performance with a PC for $300. As for why someone would get this system now, a standard SSD on console is huge on its own. Like, playing Destiny on this thing would be so much nicer than the crazy loading on current gen consoles. Pair that with Beyond Light (and all previous expansions) coming out for Game Pass, and that’s actually a pretty cool deal right there.

Obvs not everyone is into Destiny, but I also imagine this thing runs Cyberpunk like a champ, which is going to be key as I don’t think that game will run well on a base X1.

@humanity: The Xbox One X has already been discontinued and all the leaked marketing materials for the Series S/X only mention "Xbox One". My guess is that the Xbox One S is going to get a significant price drop and a name change to just Xbox One.

@ste89: Huh, kinda crazy to see the full on trailer leak like that. Well the specs seem to be what everyone was speculating. A 500gig SSD is real small though, but I guess that's why they're going to sell those expansion cards.

When i opened this thread and saw that it looked like a speaker this thing reminded me of the PS4 slim, because when that stuff leaked i thought that looks to cheap and ugly to be the real thing. But a $300 and $500 dollar price is pretty good. Now will Sony FINALLY show there price? because at this point i kinda want to see them show it only after you get to the register, retailers cant even put the price on the shelf because fuck that!

@isomeri: Yah I heard about the XB1X being discontinued, which I abbreviate in that way for whatever reason. I own one and I'm pretyt happy with it but it's kind of weird to know that it's a discontinued product when it's relatively fairly new.

@humanity: Oh, also if you look at all the Xbox Series S/X game boxes floating around the internet they all just say "Xbox" at the top with "Series X" printed in a little popup below. It seems like Microsoft are so close to finally doing what @jeff has been wanting for years now and just calling it the Xbox. Then you'll just have the Xbox S or X from whatever year you got it from.

EDIT: And yeah I like my One X too. I guess they had to drop it because it would look bad on store shelves next to a cheaper and more powerful Series S. I do wonder how low they will go on the price of the One S though...

EVEN FURTHER EDIT: Also I just realized that €299 is what a PS4 costs these days new in store. At first I didn't fully appreciate the €299 price of this Series S, but damn that's hitting Sony right in the yarbels.

@isomeri: Well I'm curious what the technical capabilities of the Series S are going to be. If it's on-par with the current XB1X then ehh but if it's a significant leap forward then thats a very competitive price especially when you bundle in Gamepass and all these games you get to play right out the gate, even if they are from the past generation. Would be curious if for instance current gen games will load significantly faster on a Series S because that in itself would be a huge deal. I'm currently playing Monster Hunter World and while the loads aren't terrible or anything, if they were reduced by half that would be a big benefit.

I don't think I understand the point of this? I get that it essentially replaces the Xbox One completely and with access to next gen games...but how long does it stick around before becoming obsolete?

@panfoot: Let's say two to three years after which they'll refresh the hardware and the guts of the current Series X will be re-engineered into the new Series S. I guess older consoles will be supported in the same way as older versions of iOS or Android, as in some games will support the older hardware and some will not.

@colonel_pockets: Thanks!

I actually like this price point! Gotta say I never expected either of the fancy next-gen machines to launch at the same price point as your average Nintendo console. However, all-digital means I'm probably not gonna give the S a second glance, and I'm not ready to plop down $500 on a new machine yet. Hope everyone who gets one enjoys it!

@panfoot: It’ll stick around as long as the Series X does. The only part that will age our faster is the GPU, and even there it can scale down to lower resolutions, like Apex running at 540p on the base X1. Microsoft has been historically really good about supporting legacy Xbox systems, so I don’t see this model meeting an untimely end.

Good price, but I would rather pick up a PS5 and slowly rebuild my PC once the the Invidia 3070 becomes available. Also for me, the integration of Facebook gaming into the Xbox environment I find to be a bit of an issue personally.

@isomeri: What's really crazy is the £249 price point. I can see that catching a lot of folks attention across the pond.

Tweet by Xbox UK

I think the thing that intrigues me most though and no one is talking about - a release date of November 10th. A Tuesday launch for a console...has that ever happened before?

@bmccann42: Wait, what? As someone who games on an X1 daily I have never seen Facebook integration on the console. Is this some FUD about the Mixer sale?

@navster15: It was my understanding that the Mixer sale brought the Facebook gang integration - am I wrong on that?

@bmccann42: There may be some option to link Facebook and Xbox accounts, but it certainly isn’t mandatory. Plus, you can always stream to Twitch on X1, even when Mixer was Microsoft owned.

@navster15: Ah gotcha! My original reading had it sound like it was mandatory to the system.

I'm pretty much fully in for a $300/£250 Game Pass machine that can play next gen games.

I'm right in saying this is aimed at people who don't have 4K tv's right?
I think this is a genius move, but i'm EXTREMELY interested to see how different games will perform, will games that run at 60fps on X not be able to do that on S?
There's going to be plenty of work for Digital Foundry in the near future.

If a 4TF console is going to be Microsoft's baseline for ~1440p/60fps next-gen, it just makes me more happy to sit on my RTX 2070 (9TF?) at the same resolution/framerate target. For reference, a RTX 2070 will struggle at 1440p/60fps/medium settings with Borderlands 3 on Mayhem 10, not to mention the temporary events which would cripple older CPUs because the game would drop in so many enemies. (I.e. the Cartel event) I will probably pick up a PS5 (which besides the super fast SSD is also ~9TF) and Switch 2 for the exclusives though.

As for game pass, I had ultimate for like a year and didn't find much to play on it. That's a personal thing obviously.

Now I wonder if the entire Xbox line is just some incredibly elaborate, expensive game of tic-tac-toe between Gates and Bezos.

Not bad prices all things considering. Now it's Sony's turn and if the price are higher it will make Microsoft look good. Yes, they have battle pass and don't NEED to sell a lot of consoles, but perception is reality and for a lot of people who aren't deep into the gaming world like we are, PS5 will appear to be the more expensive consoles which does less power-wise. Either way, the PC is one again the Silent King with the release of the RTX 30 Series for around the same price of the consoles and is a lot more powerful.

@av_gamer: While the RTX 30 Series cards seem like great value for the power, it's good to remember that a PC has other parts than just a GPU. If you were to buy that card for a PC build made in 2013 (when this generation of consoles was released), I'm guessing you'd want to replace more parts than just the GPU. And building a whole PC for less than €299 or even €499 can certainly be done, but not without great effort and likely lackluster results.

compelling price point- but i'm not (as yet) interested in game pass, so this will be more interesting to me should microsoft release some games that look like system sellers.

Ain't no-one gonna mention how this thing is a slider away from looking like a DJ Hero controller? Just me?

Xbox Series S is a very competitive offering. At $299, it's the same price as a Switch with much more powerful specs. Of course they have wildly different game libraries, but it's a very convincing offering especially if you want to play third party games at much better resolution and framerate. It has no disk drive so I'd imagine this is literally the GamePass machine.

The interesting part is that the Xbox Series S will be 1440p up to 120 FPS. There are no TVs that do 1440p @120FPS, so I guess Microsoft's play with the Series S is to appeal to people who don't mind 60FPS or people who have PC monitors and don't want to bother upgrading their PCs.

Pretty exciting. For anyone not on a 4K display—and even some who are—this is a tremendous value.

Honestly, I don't really understand the strategy behind Microsoft sitting on this for so long in radio silence. I mean, I get trying to market the Series X as the flagship device, but, at this price point in this pandemic-era economy, the Series S seems like such a persuasive option for people wanting to stay afloat with modern hardware.

Finally... a video game console I can grill some beef on.

Let’s be real here after Nvidia’s announcement last week. These new consoles are no longer considered “next-gen”. These are catch up boxes haha :D and for any one that thinks any of the new consoles will do anything higher than native 4k30fps keep dreaming.