@Dezzy@Eel I expect the Xbox One X enhancements to be available on S and X but they haven't talked about it yet. Series S and X are 100% compatible with Xbox One and they said that some backwards compatible games (Xbox and Xbox 360) will benefit from further improvements (double frame rate, higher resolution...).
@Dezzy What are the odds of being able to GET an XSeS at launch, though? Console shortages and launches go together like peanut butter and legumes.
Your games are part of your account. They cross over. X1 games can even run off a regular rotating HDD so if you have an external HDD, you should be able to just plug it in and go (hopefully.) No idea about "X1 enhanced" games though. It sounds like they aren't going to do 4k anymore (while they did on 1X) which is a really weird downgrade. But other enhancements should certainly run, including framerate and HDR additions. I doubt XBox is doing what Sony is doing with "emulation profiles" on BC so it can run as PS4 or PS4 Pro.
@NEStalgia Yep, PS5 has three performance profiles, PS4, PS4 Pro and PS5 so it doesn't use all of its power for backwards compatibility unless they add a boost mode in the future. However, on Series X and S all the power is used for backwards compatible games and they are also converted to HDR, that's amazing.
Yeah maybe not get it exactly at launch. But I might still sell my Xbox One S ahead of time, to try and get the most for it, then buy the Series S whenever it's available. I have a PS4 and Switch, so I can easily survive without an Xbox for a few months.
I think I'm gonna wait and see what Playstation announce before I decide though.
@Dezzy Yeah Sony's in a pretty awkward place. There's no real reason their hardware should be super low price, and yet both their competitors now have a $299 entry point and they don't. Sony isn't used to being the expensive one. And the only time they were it went badly (then again that beast was $600, 13 years ago... )
I bet Sony wasn't really ready for Xbox to have such a cheap option. Or who knows, maybe they have extreme spying operations going on and they're aware of everything their competitors do ahead of time?
@Dezzy My feeling is in their arrogant mode Sony assumed their idea of the next gen is everyone's idea of the next gen. They assumed ms was playing the game game. New machine, high spec, a disc and discless version, similar pricing, boom.
They had to know series s existed before, but i doubt they had any reason to believe it would match nintendo pricing. That's really going to sting given their obsession with including needlessly exotic storage at any price.
Tough call for them now. They have Asia outside Japan to themselves. Nintendo owns Japan completely. But I'm the West, they either stick to their pricing, cede the mass market and fifa crowd to ms out of the gate and just spend on money hatting publishers to buy exclusivity? Or so they absorb massive debt to challenge in price, reel in the money hatting spending to help pay for it, and get in the trenches? Or just drunkenly talk about ps4vr for the next 3 months and hope series x was a bad dream and goes away?
It came to mind that even though Series S is priced competitively against the Switch, the Switch is still the cheaper Fortnite (or FTP in general) console because FTP games on Xbox requires Gold. Microsoft would be doing themselves a gigantic favour by removing at least the Gold requirement for FTP games (removing Gold completely would be the best outcome of course).
We are the hardcore gamers but most people buy a console for FIFA (MADDEN in US, probably) and the fad online games: shooting, battle royale... Microsoft offer two options, the cheap one and the "expensive" one but, on both, people have access to the popular Game Pass, even on their phones. The cheap Xbox is better than I expected and the best value of the next generation and the expensive Xbox is the compact little monster that any hardcore gamer would want.
Nintendo have the versatility and affordable entry price although their games and accessories are painfully expensive and they also have conquered Japan and exiled Sony. Sony have the expensive console, unless they desperately undercut Microsoft at the last minute, that it's not the most powerful and also have their loyal non-Japanese fans.
One thing is certain, PS5 is not going to be the console of the casual crowd like PS4 absolutely was. Xbox One was a joke at launch and Wii U was cruelly abandoned by its mother before it grew wings. PS5 will be the console of the Sony fans crowd and that's smaller than people think.
@BlueOcean
Well, we will see what kind of games on PS5.
PS4 on its 7 years old has been flooded by Casual games like Wii / NDS era (shovelwares) and i like that trend. More casual games on PS4 better choices.
There's a massive amount of buzz behind PS5, and Sony is going to support it with a slew of big exclusives this next year, so unless they pull a PS3 and make it unreasonably expensive, the thing will sell well. Although I do expect the Series S to make bank, too. I think it's going to sell extremely well.
@BlueOcean RE: The Wii U, if the thing hadn't "grown wings" in four years of healthy first party support, it wasn't going to. I like my Wii U and still have it hooked up, but Nintendo made the right decision to abandon it and focus all of their energy on the Switch.
Currently Playing on January 13, 2026: The Hundred Line: Last Defense Academy (PC)
@Octane Depends on the price. I could see it flopping hard at launch in the face of a $300 xbox if they did the $600 price tag thing. I could see it lagging quite a bit if they don't do at least the $400 price tag on discless. At 500 vs 500 for the disc consoles Sony probably pulls ahead on that model despite worse specs because it's Sony with Sony games. But the $500 model is not where the mass market is. If Sony can undercut MS on the DISC version, that's probably what's most important to them. The mass market FIFA crowd is going to be looking at either cut rate cheap which is XSeS easy, or is looking only at disc models. If PS5 can be the cheaper disc model that might boost them greatly.
I could see them doing $479 or something for the disc model to undercut XBox...or even 450.....and then making the digital version a total joke at 425 or 439 or something, next to it so you're giving up a lot and not saving a lot. Discs are a lot more important to the PS crowd than the XBox crowd that's been building it's brand around digital. The price of the disc version is probably what matters most there. (But then how do they position and price digital if they need to cut the price of disc without it becoming PSP Go?)
@Anti-Matter Whatever console becomes the most popular console gets those kinds of games, generally late in their life cycle. I don't think they're tied to any one brand, I think they just go to whatever the most popular is. NDS, Wii, 360, PS4.... If Sony comes in most expensive this time, I think you might find XBox is the one with those kinds of games 5 or 6 years from now (though honestly it'll be Switch...)
@Ralizah I still would not be at all surprised if they pulled a PS3. I'm not expecting it, but I wouldn't be surprised by it. Rumors keep fluctuating between "It'll be $600, it'll be 500, it'll be 400." But they spent stupidly too much on that esoteric storage system and it's going to be hard for them to control price. XSeX came in at "same as X1X" pricing which is high, but not unprecedented (for XBox - but remember X1X caught a lot of guff at the time and prices fell quickly.) That's going to be within ball park, but outside "PS normal" pricing. And they're being heavily undercut at the entry price which is their absolute bread and butter, and always has been. They owned the GTA/FIFA/CoD market. They're not going to own it anymore no matter what at this point.
They could eat the loss and make a desperate race to the bottom to hold that market, or they could "embrace" their newfound "premium" status and try to position as the expensive, elite option for the "cool kids that are so much more in the know than those mass market XBox casuals. "
The buzz is irrelevant. That's internet gaming nerds. They'll always buy the consoles at launch. Even WiiU had an amazing launch. It's what Ma' Costco does at Christmas next year that counts. And a $300 console next to a $500 console won't make that a hard call. If the kids NEED discs, 500v500 doesn't sound like it'll move that well either way.... At 400/500, Sony loses the casual fifa digital market in price, and that will hurt their install base value heavily, and they run probably only slightly ahead in the premium market - a market that looks at specs more. I could see them having a slow burn this gen at those prices, lagging initially and catching up later with the full load of exclusives and price cuts/slims. If they come in over those prices, honestly they're hosed outside the chest beating net nerds unless they try to position as elite/premium/OLED owners only! I still think shaving the console price on the disc model might be a big deal for their image. Don't compete on entry price of the 300, but compete on "full disc model for less than Microsofts." BUT That really does affect their digital edition sales if they don't cut that heavily too. And I suspect they're banking hard on that to swing digital adoption more sharply in their favor. Especially as the $300 S will be doing that for MS.
RE: WiiU - Nintendo abandoned it by year 2 ,and if we're honest, I think internally they started abandoning it in 6 months, knowing it was DOA out of the gate. Sales aside, by then, they already knew the 3rd parties weren't coming and that wasn't sustainable. The rest was padding out what they already announced/ in the pipe to buy time for the new console R&D, and getting it out the door while prepping Switch. Only Vita had a worse life.
Adding EA Play to the Game Pass Ultimate is huge. We "hardcore gamers" maybe won't be interested in those sports games, but many, many players are. Xbox Series S plus Game Pass Ultimate will be killing it in next generation.
Remember that some people bought that basic Wii U model. Because it was cheaper. Price matters.
@BlueOcean@NEStalgia The end of 2012 to the end of 2016 IS four years. The Switch would have suffered similar droughts as the Wii U if it didn't have healthy third party support.
Did Nintendo start transitioning away from Wii U before that? Obviously. But it had enough games in the development pipeline that it didn't suffer from a lack of first-party support, and no matter how many good games released for the thing, sales never picked up.
And while the immediate console launch might have been good, it barely counts. It launched near the holiday season, and sales pretty rapidly fell off for the thing.
And buzz, while not everything, is very important for a new console. Enthusiasm filters its way down from the nerds to the broader gaming market, assuming the company manufacturing it doesn't mess up somehow. One of the biggest ways to mess up is price, which Sony discovered with the PS3. They know this. There's a reason Sony and Microsoft have had a pricing standoff for months on end. If Sony gets the PS5 in around the $400-ish price point, it's going to sell extremely well.
With that said, while I think Series X will be a middling-at-best success for Microsoft, the Series S is going to ensure Sony doesn't have a clean run of it like they did last gen. That $300 price point is huge.
It wasn't four years (end of 2012-end of 2016) of healthy support.
As I said, it wasn't four years (end of 2012 to end of 2016) of healthy support. Wii U was abandoned years before Switch launched (early 2017). It was supported for two years at best.
Even Nintendo Life had absolutely nothing interesting to talk about for two years! It was full of fluff. There were jokes about it.
Wii U had absolutely nothing more than a few mediocre games before Switch launched such as Paper Mario Colour Splash and Mario Tennis Ultra Smash and Breath of the Wild was delayed one year while they were developing the Switch port, confirmed by Nintendo.
Switch is not a good example, it wouldn't have had a launch game if it wasn't for the Wii U port unless you count 1-2-Switch as "game" and it would have had many months of drought, even more than it currently does, if it wasn't for the Wii U ports.
If the buzz was enough, Sony wouldn't have waited for Microsoft to reveal the console, specifications and now price and they wouldn't do things such as this report suggests:
Internet buzz means nothing. Zeus, I even read the same people everywhere: on any gaming site that I randomly visit, on Twitter... There's buzz surrounding Xbox. We are less than 1% of the gaming population.
@Ralizah WiiU was dead by year 2, and Nintendo signaling they were moving away from it signaled a sales halt. Even if they wanted to revive it they couldn't after that. Same with Sony/MS signaling moving away from 4/One....sales on current hardware slowed massively (GameStop had to rely on that for shareholders meetings to explain the downturn for 2 years.. .)
There's a massive disconnect between internet nerds and the real mass market meat and potatoes of these consoles. PS4 wasn't a resounding success because of the people drooling over Persona, Bloodborne, and Senran Kagura. It was a success because of the endless volume of people that picked up "a cheap console" at their nearest warehouse market to play the latest CoD/FIFA/etc. on. Buzz really doesn't matter. If buzz mattered X1X and PS4 Pro would be decimating PS4 and X1S sales. But neither company even dreamed of that being the case. It was always for the limtied market premium crowd and the S/4 was the main model. The low price of entry is what wins sales. Yes positive buzz is needed and negative buzz is harmful. But when you show someone a $300 next gen console and a $500 next gen console and say "but that one is better-er" the mass market is going to grab the $300 and never look back.
If Sony hits $400 for digital.....that's important, but I'm not sure if it's good enough. The digital casual market is going to go for the $300 box that's mostly the same thing but cheaper. The digital enthusiast market is going to scrutinize more and go Playstation or SeX. The physical crowd will have that 500/500 price split and can be swayed either way, probably leaning toward PS, but only somewhat. The sony loyal internet nerds and multiplat gamers will go for it.
But the hiccup is that casual market is PS's meat and potatoes way more than MS's....and MS stole that market away at $300. To win, PS must emphasize physical. That means being a compelling value on the disc model. That means cutting lower than $500. Not sure if they can do that. But if they do that, to make digital (and therefore the transition to Sony as a monopoly retailer...which is important to them) a compelling offer that also has to be cutting lower than $400. I don't think they can do that. Not with that insanely overbuilt I/O. They could...but do the numbers add up? If they do it, I'm buying 2 day 1. But I don't know if they can, and I find it unlikely. Series S seems innocent at first glance, but its positioning really throws a wrench in Sony's model. It guns right at their base market in a way they don't have any real counter-ammunition without eating their own lunch. If we pit X and 4 disc against each other at $500, it's clear PS4 wins. But that's not even the main market in the actual marketplace. That's the premium market the internet nerds are interested in. If Sony can't compete at the entry level, then they're going to have to compete as being the entry level in the physical disc console space to gain the dominance they're used to. They can do that. But it's going to mess with their plans. If they price match only, for disc, they're going to "lead" but not by significant margins, while also losing the mass market entry level entirely. I still see they could make that up late in the gen with the array of exclusives and a cost-cut slim, quite easily. But do they really want to "lose" for the first half of the gen this time? It's interesting. MS rescued this bland console generation from boredom and made it interesting again!
Well I'm almost definitely going to upgrade close to launch now. I was looking around for digital game deals, and a whole load of my favourite Xbox games (and games I'd want to play upgraded on next-gen like Witcher 3) were available for good prices digitally, so I've already bought like 5 new digital games, and I'm gonna put my retail versions up on ebay. Then I'm probably gonna sell my One S some time in the next month.
That's all unless Playstation come out with some kind of industry changing deal with their consoles. Which I seriously doubt!
Can't say no to a sackboy keychain, right? They did say what they're offering is value. And what's more valuable than a $300 next gen console that does 1440p than a $500 next gen console that does 4k and comes with a sackboy keychain? Series X doesn't offer that, does it? Does it? (seriously, our lawyers need to know because we already printed the ad copy.)
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