Xbox Series S - $299 with 512GB SSD, digital only

👀 Let’s make it official!

Xbox Series S | Next-gen performance in the ˢᵐᵃˡˡᵉˢᵗ Xbox ever. $299 (ERP).

Looking forward to sharing more! Soon. Promise. pic.twitter.com/8wIEpLPVEq
— Xbox (@Xbox) September 8, 2020

If you are going digital only, holy shit don't only go 512GB. After the OS, that's like just Destiny and CoD you can install.

locked

1933 views

With Microsoft forced to blink first, Sony is in a good spot to undercut them, but $299 is too good a price for them to really do much about it (given how MS can afford a bigger hardware hit).

I predict the PS5 will be $350 diskless, $450 otherwise (assuming they are willing to take a bigger hit than MS for the sake of install base. That SSD bringing the price to $499 won’t sound like a great deal to the majority of consumers who see the $299 alternative).

Better starting options than we had this gen, for sure, but the upgrades are more... iterative, from the looks of it.

locked

1898 views

Better starting options than we had this gen, for sure, but the upgrades are more... iterative, from the looks of it.

Are you talking about upgrades between versions of the same console? Because uh, the SSD and hardware decompression on the PS5 are not iterative… just watch that Ratchet and Clank demo as they jump between worlds.

locked

1882 views

Better starting options than we had this gen, for sure, but the upgrades are more... iterative, from the looks of it.

Are you talking about upgrades between versions of the same console? Because uh, the SSD and hardware decompression on the PS5 are not iterative… just watch that Ratchet and Clank demo as they jump between worlds.

Titanfall 2 was doing that before it was cool. Heck, Bioshock 2 dabbled with it back in the 360 era. A built-in SSD is huge in terms of load speed, but as stoked as I am for R&C2, it's not blowing me away.

locked

1872 views

Titanfall 2 was doing that before it was cool. Heck, Bioshock 2 dabbled with it back in the 360 era.

Uh… not like this dude.

locked

1855 views

With Microsoft forced to blink first, Sony is in a good spot to undercut them, but $299 is too good a price for them to really do much about it (given how MS can afford a bigger hardware hit).

I predict the PS5 will be $350 diskless, $450 otherwise (assuming they are willing to take a bigger hit than MS for the sake of install base. That SSD bringing the price to $499 won’t sound like a great deal to the majority of consumers who see the $299 alternative).

Name the last time a company who had the lead in market share "did the right thing" for the consumer? If anything they might think they can get away with charging more because their product is "more popular". I don't really see that happening above $499 though. I bet both premium consoles are priced at $499. PS5 digital will probably be $399 unless they opt for a smaller SSD like the Series S.

locked

1855 views

If you are going digital only, holy shit don't only go 512GB. After the OS, that's like just Destiny and CoD you can install.

Holy balls, how big is CoD? 250GB? Cause Destiny is only like 120ish and it's a big game.

Don't get me wrong, 512GB isn't a lot of space, but it's not bad either. I've lived with a 512GB spinning drive for the last 7 years, and I'm not exactly a casual gamer. It sucks that I can't install all my games that I want to play AND a couple next in my queue, but I've literally had 4 games that I've been actively playing on the console at once.

So yeah, you have to assume the cheaper option is for casual gamers.

locked

1867 views

If you are going digital only, holy shit don't only go 512GB. After the OS, that's like just Destiny and CoD you can install.

Holy balls, how big is CoD? 250GB? Cause Destiny is only like 120ish and it's a big game.

Quick search says 190 GB on PS4. Not sure about Xbox.

locked

1869 views

If you are going digital only, holy shit don't only go 512GB. After the OS, that's like just Destiny and CoD you can install.

Holy balls, how big is CoD? 250GB? Cause Destiny is only like 120ish and it's a big game.

Quick search says 190 GB on PS4. Not sure about Xbox.

That's @#$%ing ridiculous! Yeah, don't blame that on Xbox, blame that on CoD. Or at the very least come with expectations when playing a game as bloated as CoD.

locked

1858 views

190 is not that much more ridiculous than 120.

And it’s only going to get worse, with 4K basically becoming the default. 500GB is stupidly small for a hard drive for modern games.

locked

1861 views

Fingers crossed all this "SSD blazing fast streaming" fad translates to "compress ALL the things" and holds back this insane advance of file sizes...

locked

1854 views

190 is not that much more ridiculous than 120.

It's roughly 50% more ridiculous :D

And it’s only going to get worse, with 4K basically becoming the default. 500GB is stupidly small for a hard drive for modern games.

Where "modern games" are massive AAA games that span multiple years. I'm not saying that I wouldn't love more than 500GB and that you are probably right about the size of games going up, but perspective on who the majority of people buying this console is important.

I don't think I can count on my hand the number of games that have played on console that have been over 80GB. Even if all AAA games go to a standard of 120GB, that's still 3 games you can play all at once. Again, I'm not saying that's great, but I doubt 80% of their users will be playing three games that size at the same time. Those people who want a cheap console AND are going to be playing that many games will be buying the extra HD. Where as people who want a cheap console but don't care about playing that many games at the same time don't want to have to pay an extra 50 bucks for their console. $300 is a much better price point than $350.

locked

1863 views

👀 Let’s make it official!

Xbox Series S | Next-gen performance in the ˢᵐᵃˡˡᵉˢᵗ Xbox ever. $299 (ERP).

Looking forward to sharing more! Soon. Promise. pic.twitter.com/8wIEpLPVEq
— Xbox (@Xbox) September 8, 2020

If you are going digital only, holy shit don't only go 512GB. After the OS, that's like just Destiny and CoD you can install.

I'm really intrigued by this since I've been planning on migrating from a 4k HDR tv to a gaming monitor (hoping for 1440p HDR10 pushing 165hz) so if it has same or indiscernibly different performance as the series x just at a lower resolution. then I think I'd go with the series s off size alone and assume I'll just buy whatever external HD for warehousing games I'm not actively playing.

That it'll still:

Be on velocity architecture (so whatever near-instant load times that are the big jump this generation)
Support raytracing
Support 1440p up to 120FPS

Is just like "damn" ok, I'm in. What will change my mind is if Digital Foundry is like "yeah it is _up to_ 120fps, most of the time it'll hover around 60".

locked

1889 views

👀 Let’s make it official!

Xbox Series S | Next-gen performance in the ˢᵐᵃˡˡᵉˢᵗ Xbox ever. $299 (ERP).

Looking forward to sharing more! Soon. Promise. pic.twitter.com/8wIEpLPVEq
— Xbox (@Xbox) September 8, 2020

If you are going digital only, holy shit don't only go 512GB. After the OS, that's like just Destiny and CoD you can install.

I'm really intrigued by this since I've been planning on migrating from a 4k HDR tv to a gaming monitor (hoping for 1440p HDR10 pushing 165hz) so if it has same or indiscernibly different performance as the series x just at a lower resolution. then I think I'd go with the series s off size alone and assume I'll just buy whatever external HD for warehousing games I'm not actively playing.

That it'll still:

Be on velocity architecture (so whatever near-instant load times that are the big jump this generation)

Support raytracing

Support 1440p up to 120FPS
Is just like "damn" ok, I'm in. What will change my mind is if Digital Foundry is like "yeah it is _up to_ 120fps, most of the time it'll hover around 60".

Kind of like how the new Avengers can play "up to 4k 60fps", but that framerate is exclusive to menus, while the rest of the game struggles to hit 30fps (~45 on PC).

4K is still dumb to prioritize above other features. Performance all the way! (who can even tell the difference between 1440 and 4k on a monitor anyway?)

locked

1876 views

4K is still dumb to prioritize above other features. Performance all the way! (who can even tell the difference between 1440 and 4k on a monitor anyway?)

People with technical monitoring tools lol

I will be honest here, people looking at high contrast synthetic stuff like text or resolution charts probably might be able to as well. But that just doesn't represent actual game rendering.

locked

1884 views

Due to the SSD. Apparently a lot of space is taken up by duplicate files to get the games working with the HDDs in the 2013 consoles. I'm not a developer so I don't really fully understand how it works.

This obviously only applies to the native next-gen versions, not back-compat games. Modern Warfare 4 will still be 200 gigs because it's still the XB1 version.

locked

1887 views

Due to the SSD. Apparently a lot of space is taken up by duplicate files to get the games working with the HDDs in the 2013 consoles. I'm not a developer so I don't really fully understand how it works.

This was done on the discs… the seek time on optical media is glacially slow compared to an HDD. So they'd often have multiple copies of game files in multiple locations on the disc, so it could load large contiguous chunks at once. So like, the character model would be saved next to each piece of level data, so when the level is loaded it can just go on and load the model data too without seeking to a new section for example.

I wasn't aware they did this with HDDs, which have much faster seek times but maybe? Most games nowadays install to the HDD from the disc and don't run directly off the optical media. But that's the general principle of why they did that.

locked

1861 views

I wasn't aware they did this with HDDs, which have much faster seek times but maybe? Most games nowadays install to the HDD from the disc and don't run directly off the optical media. But that's the general principle of why they did that.

They also typically don't run directly from the HDD either. Stuff is offloaded to the RAM, which have insanely faster read-times than HDDs. With blazing fast SSDs, read times are a lot closer to RAM times, so maybe in the near future we'll skip RAM all together and just focus on CPU cache and SSDs?

locked

1860 views

so maybe in the near future we'll skip RAM all together and just focus on CPU cache and SSDs?

I mean, for throughout RAM is still 30x faster than an SSD.

With regard to latency, SSDs are measured in milliseconds. RAM is measured in NANOseconds. Your RAM is spitting out data before a beam of light can travel 10 feet.

locked

1866 views

According to the Xbox Instagram account.

Preorders for both consoles open on September 22.

Also of interest is the All Access Program—you can get either console and Game Pass for $25 a month.

EDIT: The Series X is actually $35 a month. Also, EA Access is being added to Game Pass this holiday at no extra cost. There’s your answer on Anthem, Korny. (:

locked

1864 views

- No text -

locked

1844 views

- No text -

locked

1834 views

Off the bat, that's 60+ EA games available on Gamepass (Battlefield, Mass Effect, Need for Speed franchises), special deals and discounts, and free 10-hour trials of their new releases.
Best of all, you get Anthem for free!

Microsoft swinging harder than Sony possibly can, I feel (especially since Sony has no true Gamepass counter (PS Now ain't remotely there yet)), though rumors swirling aboot say that Sony is set to respond today.

Also of interest is the All Access Program—you can get either console and Game Pass for $25 a month.

Do note that the All Access is a bit of a scam in the long run. You'll end up paying $600 for the series S, and around $850 for the Series X. Sure, having Gamepass Ultimate included in the price mitigates that somewhat, but when you can get it standalone for as low as $80 a year, it's still an extra $120 to finance the S alone (AFTER including Gamepass Ultimate).

You're WAY better off financing through something like Best Buy, who will pretty much let you do the same thing without such a significant markup.

locked

1887 views

Microsoft swinging harder than Sony possibly can,

Except for the whole good games thing… :-p

locked

1879 views

Microsoft swinging harder than Sony possibly can,

Except for the whole good games thing… :-p

There is no doubt that Sony has good games. It's just that Microsoft is also giving good games but even more of them. Also, depending on how you do it, they are giving them to you for even cheaper.

locked

1864 views

Microsoft swinging harder than Sony possibly can,

Except for the whole good games thing… :-p

There is no doubt that Sony has good games. It's just that Microsoft is also giving good games but even more of them. Also, depending on how you do it, they are giving them to you for even cheaper.

This is the X factor.

I think they are hoping people will play all the good cross platform games on gamepass.

locked

1889 views

Microsoft swinging harder than Sony possibly can,

Except for the whole good games thing… :-p

There is no doubt that Sony has good games. It's just that Microsoft is also giving good games but even more of them. Also, depending on how you do it, they are giving them to you for even cheaper.

This is the X factor.

I think they are hoping people will play all the good cross platform games on gamepass.

Yeah, the whole platform exclusive games are getting kinda stale in terms of platform switching power. I think Microsoft is just saying, hey, well we already have these but also have a shit ton of extra games as well for a simple price.

Will it make people switch over? Maybe not, but it might keep people playing XBox over PS if if you own both.

locked

1866 views

That is the distinction. You only go with Sony if you want one or more of their exclusives. If you mostly play multi-platform releases you have limited reason to pursue a Playstation.

locked

1869 views

That is the distinction. You only go with Sony if you want one or more of their exclusives. If you mostly play multi-platform releases you have limited reason to pursue a Playstation.

What if you're like me and don't want dashboard ads :-p

locked

1864 views

What if you're like me and don't want dashboard ads :-p

Nobody is like you, Cody. You're one of a kind. [kissy face emoji]

locked

1850 views

- No text -

locked

1876 views

That is the distinction. You only go with Sony if you want one or more of their exclusives. If you mostly play multi-platform releases you have limited reason to pursue a Playstation.

Then you stick with a Commodore 64

A resonable person

What do you do? When a perfectly reasonable person tries to reason with an unreasonable person and starts to become unreasonable themselves?

locked

1863 views

- No text -

locked

1879 views

- No text -

locked

1860 views

I'm curious how they will do the financing option, or more, enforce it.

If you don't pay your cellphone bill, they cut your service. Is that what they would have to do with an Xbox? If so, does that mean they are revisiting their "always connected" mentality? Could they render the Xbox unplayable? What if you unplug it? Will they repossess it?

Of course most games require a network connection to play them, I recognize this but, there are still games that can be played offline.

I would guess to get the financing option, you would have to purchase it from MS so they could track the serial number? Otherwise, what's stopping someone from paying $35 once, ghosting, then using a different card to create a new XBL account.

What if someone finances, regrets it and sells the box mid contract? What happens to the person that bought it? Are they SOL?

I'm interested to see how this pans out.

[EDIT]
I'll also add, I hope it works well. $500 is a big chunk of cash, and they are basically offering a financing charge of less than $5 a month. Not a bad deal if that's the route you choose. During these times when dropping $500 up front isn't an option for many, this could be viable option.

locked

1874 views

You sign a contract and open a line of credit or something. You're pretty tied to the whole thing. Hopefully the bail-outs are fair, though.

locked

1855 views

It depends on how you look at it. You can’t just ignore that you’re getting Game Pass and say that a Series S will cost $600. Taken at face value and paying full price for Game Pass Ultimate, you’re getting a Series S for $240, or a Series X for $480. That’s a good deal. I suspect most people are just paying the $15 a month for Game Pass Ultimate, rather than hunting for deals, so I’m not sure you can really use deal pricing to judge the value. I mean, you can, personally, but I don’t think that’s how most people are engaging with the service to begin with.

locked

1877 views

It depends on how you look at it. You can’t just ignore that you’re getting Game Pass and say that a Series S will cost $600. Taken at face value and paying full price for Game Pass Ultimate, you’re getting a Series S for $240, or a Series X for $480. That’s a good deal. I suspect most people are just paying the $15 a month for Game Pass Ultimate, rather than hunting for deals, so I’m not sure you can really use deal pricing to judge the value. I mean, you can, personally, but I don’t think that’s how most people are engaging with the service to begin with.

I mean, it definitely sounds like a good value if you're the kind to slap your card on something and hit "Auto-renew".

But it is a lot more expensive in the long run if you're even casually into deals and sales (Microsoft historically has two major sales per year on Gamepass and Gold, with one pretty much every November). Like I said, even WITH Gamepass ultimate included in the $600, you end up paying far more than you would if you just financed the console through Best Buy (who wouldn't charge you any interest for a while, given the price), and picked up a couple of deals for Ultimate down the road.

That said, I hope enough ~~suckers~~ people are financially sound enough to just do the All Access (though, why wouldn't they just buy the console outright at that point?), since that can only give MS more incentive to invest in Gamepass down the road.

locked

1911 views

When does the next gen version of Destiny launch?

locked

1869 views

I thought it was with New Light?

locked

1860 views

It very well might be, I couldn’t recall if they ever actually gave a date.

locked

1860 views

When does the next gen version of Destiny launch?

November 10th, with Beyond Light.

locked

1886 views

When does the next gen version of Destiny launch?

November 10th, with Beyond Light.

Also AC: Valhalla because they bumped up their release date to the 10th.

locked

1900 views

Back to the forum index

RSS Feed of thread

DBO Forums

Xbox Series S - $299 with 512GB SSD, digital only (Gaming)

Same-ish leak also put Series X at $499 US, November 10.

Same-ish leak also put Series X at $499 US, November 10.

Same-ish leak also put Series X at $499 US, November 10.

Same-ish leak also put Series X at $499 US, November 10.

Same-ish leak also put Series X at $499 US, November 10.