Xbox Series S design, price purportedly leaked in new video

[Redaktion]

Microsoft's cheaper and less powerful Xbox Series S has seemingly leaked out for the first time. The new console sports a design that has elements of the Xbox Series X design and earlier Xbox One designs. It is also tipped to cost US$299.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Xbox-Series-S-design-price-purportedly-leaked-in-new-video.492448.0.html

[Valantar]

the Xbox Series S isn't expected to be able to run the next-generation titles that will run natively on the the Xbox Series X, but it should be able to stream them without any problems should Microsoft make that functionality available

Uh, sorry, where did you get that from? There is no way whatsoever MS will release a console in 2020 that can't play next-gen titles - but it will obviously do so at a lower resolution and lower graphics settings. I.e. if the XSX aims for 4k30 or above, this likely goes for 1080p30. The vast majority of console buyers - particularly those with limited budgets! - don't have the type of internet connection required to reliably stream games.

Likely specs, going by logic alone, is the same CPU config (perhaps clocked marginally lower, but they can't reduce the number of cores/threads), less RAM (they still need 2.5GB for the system, so maybe 10GB total?), and a much lower spec GPU (I would guess 20-24 CUs). No optical drive, likely a half-size SSD, and of course a much lower spec and simpler cooler and smaller PSU to match the rest of the system. All of this would cut costs drastically.


That price though ... that's a winner.

[Sanjiv Sathiah]

Developers complained about making games Xbox One X 'Enhanced' games as well as games that would work on the regular Xbox One/S. There is such a performance differential between the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S (12TF versus just 4TF) it makes me wonder. At just 4TF, 2TF slower than the Xbox One X, it's hardly worthy of the title of "next-gen" console. The other aspect of it that makes me think that is its STB-like design. It has streaming written all over it. Happy to be proven wrong.

[Sanjiv Sathiah]

@Valantar. On further reflection, you're probably right. Will revise the article.

[Anonym]

At just 4TF, 2TF slower than the Xbox One X, it's hardly worthy of the title of "next-gen" console.

Teraflops is a very bad unit to make such comparisons across consoles, as much like MIPS for CPUs, it is very much dependent on a single fastest instruction within the GPU micro-architecture (that does not reflect its real-world usefulness to a game). The One X has a GCN GPU, while the Series S has a RDNA CPU -- the numbers are not comparable at all despite apparently being the same unit; rest assured the Series S will very much surpass the performance of the One X.

[Valantar]

Developers complained about making games Xbox One X 'Enhanced' games as well as games that would work on the regular Xbox One/S. There is such a performance differential between the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S (12TF versus just 4TF) it makes me wonder. At just 4TF, 2TF slower than the Xbox One X, it's hardly worthy of the title of "next-gen" console. The other aspect of it that makes me think that is its STB-like design. It has streaming written all over it. Happy to be proven wrong.

As the anonymous user above states, TFlops can't be compared between architectures - even from the same vendor! - and extrapolated into gaming performance. The 5.1TF RX 5500 XT soundly beats the 6.1TF RX 580, after all. Beyond that, don't discount the effect of moving from a decade-old low power CPU architecture without SMT to a brand new, high-performance architecture (the IPC increase between Jaguar and Zen 2 is something like 3x, if not more) with SMT and much higher clocks. Remember, the XOX aimed for 4k (typically upscaled), so if this aims for a lower resolution than that it ought to perform admirably.

@Valantar. On further reflection, you're probably right. Will revise the article.

Great :)