All the Xbox Series S details, and more tech news you need to know today

 

1. Xbox Series S goes official for $299, and unofficial specs are good

Last night some Xbox leaks revealed a bunch more about the upcoming next-gen Xbox, but not the Series X and its big tall cube console, but a much smaller console. And for the first time, a price: $299 for this smaller model, and the Xbox Series X for $499.

• This morning, Microsoft stepped up to make it official
• It revealed the new Xbox Series S, with the tagline “Next-gen performance in the smallest Xbox ever”, and confirming the $299 price (along with €299 and a cheap-sounding £249.99 in the UK).
• No date was given for the launch, but leaks are hinting at November 10.

And, just to make it a big big day, the leakers released even more, with a full 1 minute 30-second presentation video revealing a stack of Series S spec information:

Xbox Series S:

• First the design: when compared to the Xbox controller, it’s quite small. It’s not tiny but it’s shorter and way thinner than the beefy Series X.

• And the price! Wow, the $299 price is a pretty solid value proposition. Expectations are the Series X will be $499 or so, and so this is much more accessible.
• At $299 it’s also a $100 discount on the current Xbox One X, but much faster: the same processor as the Xbox Series X and faster storage.
• And while this morning we were first guessing at the specs, the leak reveals loads more.
• We now know the console will target 120fps gaming at up to 1440p resolution and offer 512GB of NVMe SSD storage. (For reference, 1440p is a 2560×1440 resolution, also known as Quad HD; 4K is 2160p, 3840×2160, or Ultra HD.)
• That leaves it short of the true 4K gaming you get with the Series X, but as the leak shows, it can handle 4K streaming and media playback, 4K upscaling of games, and the S includes support for ray tracing, variable rate shading, and variable refresh rate.
• Digital-only means no disc drive, so downloads only.
• The more compact design is small enough, if you believe the leak, inside the mammoth Xbox Series X machine:

‘All Access’:

• One more thing is how you’ll pay.
• An ‘Xbox All Access’ financing option, which is a monthly payment to cover the console, along with GamePass Ultimate, is being rolled out further and more aggressively.
• Windows Central reports the Series S will be $25 per month (presumably for 24 months?), while the Series X will be a $35 per month option.
• There will be terms and conditions to wrangle with, and apparently, the scheme will be going from US-only to global, so local pricing and availability around the world will be interesting.
• Ultimately, this could be the most important Xbox yet. Much more accessible, much more tailored to Game Pass streaming, and very different to Sony’s approach with the PlayStation 5.
• Both can be right, but just having access to Game Pass is a growing must for gamers.