Does The Xbox Series S Still Make Sense In 2024?

The Xbox Series S falls short of matching its superior counterpart in terms of performance; however, is it worth purchasing in 2024?

[RpgSama]

It did not make sense at the time of launch, it makes even less sense now.

[Cacabunga]

Couldn’t have said better

[peppeaccardo]

I do not own a MS product in years, but in my modest opinion "it does make sense for the majority of Xbox customers who purchased it as a mean to enter in the next gen phase of video games evolution BUT it doesn't make sense for the industry as a whole as it is holding back its revolution" ... that's all.

[Abear21]

If you’re on a budget it saves dollars and that makes sense

[Chocoburger]

"on a budget" and "next generation gaming" don't go together. If you can't afford a PS5 (staring at $400 USD), a Series X (starting at $500 USD), or a modern PC, then don't worry about next gen gaming, play on older systems. PS3, PS4, PS4 Pro, 360, XBO, XBOX, NSW, you have plenty of options.

Or just save up your money, you don't need gaming immediately, its a luxury.

[ABizzel1]

Regardless if it matters are not, the reality is according to sales charts / rumors it is the better selling of the two consoles, and as a result it has placed MS in a place where they are missing games altogether due to developers realizing their games will likely sell significantly better on PlayStation.

I don’t think people really see how bad it is for Xbox consoles currently.

It’s been 3 1/2 years and they’re somewhere floating around 28.5 million consoles sold, and last year they didn’t even break 8m sold for the year. This year is even worse than 2023 so far as they’re struggling to sell over 200k console per month GLOBALLY. To put that into perspective if they keep this same pace by November 2024 WHICH WILL BE 4 YEARS ON THE MARKET they will finally cross the 30 million mark. Meanwhile, the original Xbox which has been looked at as a SALES failure sold 25 million units during the same time frame. Not to mention all of this is happening with the Series X and S still seeing sale prices as low as holiday 2023. If anything the Series S has been a saving grace for their sales numbers, accounting for 20 million compared to the Series X 10 million by holiday 2024.

I don’t think the Series S was a complete mistake, the problem is MS skimped on too many key components like the cutting the GPU back way too much to the point it was behind even the Xbox One X in many ares, as well as cutting the amount of RAM and memory bandwidth to fit a $249 price point. It’s a lesson learned, but it’s also paints the picture that Xbox’s “core audience” (the Series X owners) has shrunk so much from the Original Xbox -> 360 -> even XBO, that it doesn’t make business sense to invest in a high-end console when the hardware sales don’t justify the investment.

“The Xbox Brand” that people loved during the 360 era is dead, and now it’s the GamePass company ran by Microsoft.
*They should just focus on a $299 console that runs a Window Kernel, has mass appeal and capable enough hardware (unlike the Series S)
*A possible $199 mobile option for streaming GamePass on the go
*A $20 - $50 plug-and play GamePass streaming stick (GamePass, Netflix, Hulu, etc…)
*And getting GamePass on as many platforms as possible (PlayStation, Nintendo, TVs, Mobile App Stores, etc…)

[SonyStyled]

They aren’t taking in new customers and their user base declining now. The series S was a great attempt to create new Xbox customers. It did what it needed to do for it’s time

[Zeref]

This same console lets people play Starfield at 120fps and in the future GTA 6. It's only 300 dollars and you can get a used one for half that price. It makes plenty of sense.

[Sonic1881]

😂

[Vits]

I mean, it’s not a completely weird strategy when you take into consideration that the best-selling console is often the weakest. In the last three generations, the only time the most powerful base console took the lead was with the PS4, and that is only true if we consider the Switch to be "next-gen." Before that, both the GameCube and Xbox lost to the weaker PS2, and the PS3 and Xbox 360 got their asses handed to them by the Wii.

The issue with the Series S is not the power; it’s the library. Microsoft simply did not support their consoles this generation with interesting software, and that is what made the difference for those other winners at the end of the day.

[Deeeeznuuuts]

Not at all and was a mistake from the get go, it's holding developers back and that's never a good thing and will only get worse, I understand why Microsoft did it, don't get me wrong but overall just wasn't worth it, especially now late on in the generation where were seeing more and more developers speaking out about it, such as Kingdom come and black myth, that's also just two that have publicly spoke out about it, wonder how many more devs behind closed doora aee not happy

[Jin_Sakai]

It never made sense. Series S was a mistake.

[hollabox]

The specs were too different. If it had 12 gigs of ram and something like 8 TFLOPS with 320 GBS of bandwidth with everything else being the same? Then yeah, the XBSS would have made sense as a companion console with the XSX. You get a GPU that's about a quarter more powerful than the XB1X GPU and a much better CPU for the time. When I saw the specs, I said oh, this is a problem. Morons like Dealer and Colt beat the table talking about sliders and the lowest platform being PC. They sounded like complete idiots not understanding PC lowest end specs shifts every year upwards. They spoke about features they didn't understand besides reading of a spec sheet. They pushed hard for Lockheart and 1440P 60, when crap hit the fan one went complete radio silenced, others jumped to Playstation. Others continued to shill for MS as long as they continued receiving special invites and early release copies of games.

[BlackCountryBob]

The series S isn’t anywhere near as powerful, but it is very well priced, readily available and has I believe massively outsold the series x. Perhaps the biggest question is given Microsoft want people to join Gamepass as the recurring subscription is their main priority, does the expensive and under utilised series X make sense in 2024 when many players have shown they are price sensitive and happy with Series S / SteamDeck graphical features?

[arm71174]

Very good argument if the sales depict that. I think their best bet is to not focus on the hardware after this generation with the sales of Nintendo and Sony consoles seemingly dominating them in sales. Instead focus on the publishing side and get the games they release from all the studios they purchased on all platforms instead of releasing these big expensive games to a pultry console user base. They can't rely on Xbox and PC game sales alone when the hardware just isn't moving. If they continue that they will be closing more studios. The worst decision they made is thinking GamePass was going to do what Netflix did to the movie industry. What a terrible strategy... It literally has made me stop purchasing games on Xbox and that loss in revenue for game studios is just horrible. It's a business and GamePass was a ridiculous attempt to fix the Xbox One fail. Unfortunately it's almost as bad as the Xbox One marketing strategically.

[BlackCountryBob]

I’m a PlayStation guy but I do appreciate the value that GamePass offers, but it doesn’t make financial sense to me for every new release to go on there, even Disney Plus charged an extra fee for people to watch Black Widow in the beginning before making it part of the subscription later on.

That said, the biggest barrier to any game subscription service being viable is that many of the most successful and most played games are free. A fairly large number of gamers don’t buy or subscribe to games but play Fortnite, Minecraft, PUBG, Warzone etc pretty much all the time, then there’s another group who exist in one annual game like FIFA, Madden, COD / Battlefield, F1 etc so even if you think of 100m console owners, in reality only maybe a half or less are actually buying games regularly which massively limits the potential from selling a console at a loss with the hope for games / subscriptions to make the loss back over time.

[GamingSinceForever]

So wait did the X suddenly surpass the S in sales?

[Aloymetal]

Only in France...;)

[Aloymetal]

If the series S which makes 70%+ of the sales don't feel like making sense, what's left for the bigger Lego block aka series X???...

[GamingSinceForever]

My exact sentiments.

[CrimsonWing69]

The problem is that it’s selling more than Series X, so MS stuck with it. I could do with a generation that doesn’t have this crap.

[Scissorman]

GTA 6 is going to be an interesting launch.

[andy85]

This is what worries me. How much is that game gonna be handicapped on the full fat consoles because of it

[shinoff2183]

The same it was handicapped on DVD as opposed to bluray

[Scissorman]

It's definitely a cause for concern. Also look at games like Baldur's Gate 3 and Black Myth: Wukong. Both titles had to delay their Series S/X releases due to the S. Could we see a similar situation with GTA 6?

[purple101]

I have thought the same

Many gamers must be thinking “how is this going to run on my series s”

Well, I’d guess 720p with a scrappy dappy doo 30fps (more wobbly than your nans jelly)

[ChasterMies]

For Microsoft, yes. They long ago said they considered the Series S to be their mid-cycle, low cost, slim model. This has been great for Sony. A $450 PS5 slim digital would be a tough sell if the competition wasn’t a Xbox Series S. Stupid, stupid Microsoft.

[Tacoboto]

"It doesn't make sense!"

Stated by the crowd enamored with a $200 cloud controller.

All the while... There's a mobile chipset from the mid-2010s, still priced at up to $350, still getting brand new games, brand new 60fps titles.

[jznrpg]

Xbox doesn’t make much sense.

[RaiderNation]

Does Xbox still make sense in 2024?

[DivineHand125]

It's disappointing that so many people chose to pick up the Series S over the Series X. I think the YouTubers should also share some of the blame. During the pandemic, retro gaming got a second wind and when it was revealed that you could use emulators on the series consoles, many YouTubers began promoting the console.

I got the Series X myself and tried emulation. The truth that no one wants to tell you is that the Xbox series consoles are the worst platform to emulate simply because of how difficult to set up and once you set it up, there is a chance Retroarc will stop working. Microsoft is also quietly trying to stop you from emulating on their console. No matter what anyone says, the best platform to emulate is a PC. Don't waste time on Raspberry Pi, Android, or whatever else. I just connect a laptop to my TV and I am all set.

The YouTubers who weren't into emulation promoted it as a low-cost game pass machine.

[shinoff2183]

I pretty much use my series x to emulate and it was pretty easy. Haven't had any issues at all. I'd recommend a guide on YouTube and your golden.

[Elda]

Nope. They should stop making them.

[Lightning77]

Does a console that's holding back the X make sense? Absolutely not.

[franwex]

I do think it makes sense. As the article stated, if they are making games for switch-even previous gen. Then yes. Absolutely.

What doesn’t make sense is the parity that Microsoft forces. That’s literally the problem. A developer should be able to decide if it makes sense to port a game to the S. Now Microsoft isn’t getting any ports.

[Bathyj]

Series S is a bigger handicap in the industry than when Xbox said you know what, we'll stick with DVD not Blu-ray. They really are incredibly short signed.

[Destiny1080]

its the only console that xbox gamers can afford

[Chocoburger]

Pointless question. It never made sense. All MS needed to do was release the Series X without a disc drive and charge $100 less.

The whole idea behind "cheaper entry into buying next gen consoles" was always stupid. It reminds me of what Sega tried to do releasing both the 32x and Sega Saturn in 1994, hurting themselves in the end. MS hasn't learned from the mistakes of the past, thus the situation they are in now.

[ocelot07]

"All MS needed to do was release the Series X without a disc drive and charge $100 less"

Now that makes to much sense. Powers that be a Xbox thought no let's not do that. Instead wait 4 years to do it but not for $100 cheaper. Let's make it $50 cheaper but since it's 4 years later it's actually cheaper to get the disc console.

[talocaca]

Did it ever make sense? I bought one....my first ever Xbox. I had it for 3 years and barely used it. I was happy I finally got to play Sunset Overdrive.

Most games were clearly inferior to their PS5 counterparts and GamePass is really hit or miss.

I ended up selling it and I don't miss it at all 🤷‍♂️

[Knightofelemia]

It never made sense not sure what Microsoft was thinking when they launched it. I can understand affordability but nerfing games just run on the machine waste of time and effort. Microsoft should have gone same machine same specs only difference is one has a disc driver the other doesn't.

[gold_drake]

they should have never went with a weaker version of the same device. its barely any stronger than the x1x.

bad planning on ms part imo.

[purple101]

You literally could not do a worse job than Microsoft if you tried

Launch 2 consoles, one with only 10gb ram ✅

Launch WITH NO GAMES ✅

Launch with same controller but now 3% smaller, with worse build quality than the 360 ✅

Couldn’t write this stuff

[ChiefofLoliPolice]

It never made sense from the fucking start...

[Firebird360]

It never did. It hindered an entire generation.

[Demetrius]

Microsoft doesn't even care that series s causes devs to struggle getting games out I'm sure it holds up production sometimes, smh its like they didn't give af tryna make money this gen lol they like we'll just continue to tease games that's 2 or more years away from release that's enough right???🤦🏾 devs really got 3 whole consoles to work on, this, the series x then ps5 sheesh

[RhinoGamer88]

No, next questions. #philfail

[Einhander1972]

Why does this have to be about switching from PS5 to PC? Couldn't this just have been an article about PC?

Nothing against anyone based on their culture or heritage, but what is the deal with these UAE websites and "journalists" constantly pushing off these anti PlayStation articles? There is another UAE site that regularly posts here and it's also 100% PlayStation bashing and xbox support and I have noticed a pattern among other similar sites and journalists. But judging by sales the citizens in the UAE greatly prefer PlayStation over xbox so it's another weird disconnect about the whole thing.

Has the UAE become the cheapest place to hire troll farms or something? It doesn't make sense that UAE citizens would naturally be interested in propping up a huge American mega corps, quite the opposite, unless they were getting something out of it.

Again this article should have been about simply building PC's ot's the fact that PlayStation is brought up is weird, out of all the gamers in the world obviously PC (or mobile) already has the biggest share, why are they trying to convince people to leave a relatively small player, it's got to be for money, and not just clicks money...

There is no money to be made for a website moving people to PC, ASUS certainly isn't paying for this, this is just about damaging PlayStation...