Topic: The everything Xbox thread

@DarthNocturnal
And this is why I pre-ordered Series X. I have 1080p TV. And my Xbox game collection is digital. So Series S would have been fine for me.

That's right but the Series S is tiny and the size of games is supposed to be 30% smaller so the Series S is not a bad deal either.

Based on the several polls I've seen on what people bought, it's simply because a lot more people have bought the Series X.
The people who preorder consoles are disproportionately hardcore gamers who have the money to spare, so tend to go for the beefiest version available.

After seeing how big the ps5 games are, I'm worried about buying digitally. Hopefully the box arts aren't generic for both consoles games.

@DarthNocturnal Both X and S use that storage. If that price is right, for $520 you get 1.5TB storage and a 1080p console. Or for $720 you get 2.0TB storage and a 4k console. The price split of each console with a storage upgrade still fleshes out pretty well.

@BlueOcean Ouch, that could indeed XB storage costs more than Sony's though we still don't know how you upgrade Sony's and it's clear you can't have any more than 4 AAA games installed at a time on any of these new consoles. Comcast is going to freak out in the States..... they can't sustain that kind of bandwidth increase suddenly. They spent the past decade making sure to not spend a penny on infrastructure, and just capping users.

It's fun. They have a "soft cap" - if you go over your 1TB limit they just start billing you insane per-100GB overage fees up to a few hundred a month..... a lot of gamers are going to get very surprising internet bills....

@GilbertXi I'm still worried that vindictive sony will find a way to stop "game sharing" (running games on 2 consoles, the "primary" logged in as another user, and the other console logged in as yourself. This gen X1, PS4, and even Switch work that way. I don't worry XB will break that ability. But money grubbing Sony, I'm very worried they'll try that.

@BruceCM That's another good point. A lot of preorderers are going to be existing XBox ecosystem customers that have existing possibly physical libraries they need BC on. For them, the S is a nonstarter. But the S will sell well for new customers, brick and mortar shoppers (if brick and mortar ever exists at this point, which is doubtful. Even post plague, the only thing lefter are the same 5 stores online preorders came from...)

Yeah & then people who are happy to go all-digital might also be thinking about the cost of the storage, if they're like you for wanting lots of games on their system, @NEStalgia .... That's a big reason for some to prefer the X

Woah, that's some expensive storage expansion
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-09-24-xbox-series-x-s...

@DarthNocturnal That's exactly what I do on Xbox One X so it won't be different until expansion cards are more affordable. Online games and racing games on internal memory, the rest of my games on HDD, no big deal. However, because the internal memory of Series X/S is faster and next-gen games require to be played on SSD, I will move the current big game to the internal memory, e.g., Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I think that it will be fine.

Yeah anyone who buys that SSD expansion on day 1 is pretty dumb. I'll wait like 3 or 4 years until they're selling at half price in a deal.

@DarthNocturnal With 4k texture packs I don't think life on the X will be much better. Thats one thing I'm really not happy about with the new consoles. I'm used to 8TB of all my games at the push of a button. Moving them around all the time is going to be a pain in the rear, though, at least we can move them around to bulk storage....not sure PS5 even lets you do that?

I'm going to miss just diving into any game on a whim (well my BC games I can still do that so there's still 300+ to jump into....but you know what I mean.

@Dezzy I'll probably have to be dumb... Not day 1 dumb, but not 3-4 years "it's the end of the gen" dumb, either. Though I hope buy then there's 4-6TB options for no more than $200.

@BlueOcean well it's still par with the bare 1TB PC equivalent of the PS4 class speed. The price is still too high IMO...it's Seagate, and I'm sure they're making u p the money on the console with these. Nothing in life is free. Though some things are freeer than Spiderman uprezzing.

@NEStalgia

You're getting an X though aren't you?

At least they are compact and support hot swapping. On PS5 there's no port on the back of the console (a guy posted a photo)

https://cdn.pressstart.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/PS5-...

so you have to remove the side of the console (I can't think of any other way) to insert an additional SSD (those will be pricey as well).

I like the Series expansion cards. Are they expensive now? Yes. Will I buy one this year? No. Is it a better, easier solution than Sony's? Yes.

I read somewhere that 2TB expansion cards will be released too, which is no surprise. Perhaps 4TB eventually.

Now please be ready because I'm going to give you the official price:

£220 with taxes / €250 with taxes / $220 without taxes

https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/p/Seagate-Storage-Expansion-C...

@Dezzy I am. But with 30% larger games, the X only gets 350GB more functional space, comparatively (I.e. as average, the same games installed that take up 500GB on the S would take up 650GB on the X. In practice I'm sure it'll be more than that depending on the games.)

And I believe the size difference after seeing the size of X1X games versus X1S games....it's a big difference for the full res textures.

@BlueOcean Yeah, I'm imagining you have to remove the side of the console. Which doesn't leave me with warm thoughts, but considering the top of 4Pro just snaps on and off, and the router panels aren't even flush with the device, it's possible/probable they just pop on and off like a battery door anyway. Which is also incredibly stupid. But at least better than popping out screwdrivers and spudgers, and some might like it being internal rather than hanging out the back.

Though the PS5 HDD situation is weird. XS drives have to be the same drive and it's plugged into the IO. PS5's has to be a drive FASTER than the internal non-removable drive for reasons that only Mark Cerny seems to understand. They tried to do the bespoke console thing while also being an x86 console, like reliving the PS3 dream. Though proprietary storage for XS isn't a thrilling idea either. I did that with 360. Why are both companies returning to 7th gen this time?

Also, does it matter youcan hot swap them when buying more than one costs more than the whole console? I'd rather just buy 2 consoles and put shooters on one and RPGs on the other for that money.

Lol this should be against the Declaration of Human Rights. What a joke.

@NEStalgia The Router is, actually, a Transformers building with lights on the roof and a secret entrance on the side.

That's true, the size of Xbox One X games is huge. At the end of the day, both Series X and S will be in a similar situation considering the UHD and HD textures. Next-gen games have less repeated data so perhaps they aren't as big as they are now. I think we'll be fine until we can afford the expansion cards except @NEStalgia the rich nerd that we all love, regardless.

@BlueOcean The repeated data isn't going to save much. We have our first game sizes from the Sony camp. Dark Souls is 60-some GB, Spiderman 1.6 + Spiderman Re-HD are over 100GB. That's over 160GB out of an 825GB drive for 2.5 games. Sounds........like this gen but maybe 5-10GB smaller at best.

Edit: Hah, rich.....I wish! I'm not the one with the C9

@NEStalgia Ha ha ok. The 55" C9 wasn't that expensive last year 😁.

Only the HD and UHD textures will make a difference then, like on One S and One X.

@NEStalgia

Yeah but if you're already getting the Series X, then the same argument of "Series S + expansion card is the same price as the Series X. Just get that instead." obviously won't apply to you, as there is no other console 200 more expensive than the X