The rumored, yet, almost official Xbox Series S is will be about 61% less powerful than the Xbox Series X. A new spec leak confirms that the Xbox Series S won’t target 4K gaming, but a bump in RAM from 7.5GB GDRR6 to 10GB GDDR6 has given us hope that the budget console can target 1440p at 60fps gameplay.
A Navi GPU with 20 Compute Units and a 1.550GHz clock speed put the console at 4Tflops of GPU power. While numerically that’s a lower number than the current Xbox One X, the Xbox Series S is capable performing much better thanks to the newer architecture, and its powerful CPU which is a match for the premium console.
A price point has yet to be revealed, but some rumored leaks (they may or may not be trustworthy ) have placed the premium Xbox Series X at a higher than expected price point (over $500) which makes the Xbox Series S price point an interesting guess at this point.
By our estimation, a $299-$349 price point is very possible given the specs of the budget machine. For all of the talk that Phil Spencer has done about not wanting to compete on the home console space, Microsoft has poured an immense amount of effort in designing these two next gen consoles, and unlike Sony, it is giving players a choice between a premium and a budget model.
The budget Xbox Series S seems to be capable of performing everything that the Xbox Series X can but at lower resolutions. The difference in quality between a game in one console to the other might be lower than it is right now between the Xbox One S and Xbox One X models.
Ray-Tracing, however, is something that remains a mystery for the lower spec device. Considering the gulf in GPU power, between both next gen Xbox consoles, and how expensive it is (on the hardware) to do Ray-Tracing, it is a safe to assume that maybe the Xbox Series S won’t be able to have this feature on its games.
The release date for the console is also a bit of a mystery, as Microsoft had yet to announce it, though conventional wisdom would dictate that Microsoft would be better served by having both models available at launch.
The Xbox Series S, like the X version of the hardware will be backwards compatible with every Xbox game of previous generations. While Microsoft hasn’t shown a robust package of launch titles for November, its backward compatible system is much more efficient and so far this gen has been infinitely better than anything that its competition has to offer.
Nintendo’s subscription program allows gamers to play a select number of early NES and SNES titles, but the fact that Nintendo 64, GC, and Wii titles are all missing from the service makes Nintendo’s efforts in that area, primitive to say the least.
Sony hasn’t been much better in that regard, the PS4 doesn’t really offer any backwards compatible features right out of the box, and Sony claims to be working on correcting some of its issues, but remains far behind Microsoft on this area.
Xbox fans can look forward to continuing playing their enhanced games from previous generations on the new Xbox Series S/X models. We will keep you informed on the new developments concerning the Xbox Series S and its upcoming reveal.