And I think there will be three new-generation Xboxes. One is already on sale
The Xbox Series S is to be Microsoft’s secret weapon and a way to take away a part of the PlayStation clientele. The argument is to be yet unknown, but apparently extremely attractive price. In addition, there should be an offer for even less wealthy people.
There are many indications that the upcoming generation of consoles will have a fairly high entry threshold – in an economic sense. Both manufacturers this time opted for quite expensive components – the Xbox Series and PlayStation 5 are to use very expensive GPUs and even more expensive mass memory.
The sum of the value of the components in both devices indicates a price well above 3,000. PLN – although, which is very important, such estimates do not include discounts from component suppliers that can be negotiated by both manufacturers. Which for sure both succeeded, although we don’t know the details.
Microsoft and Sony – after a quite successful experiment in the form of burned-up PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X consoles and after urgent observation of the sales dynamics on the smartphone market – decided that consumers are apparently ready to pay a bit more for their favorite electronic toys.
Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will have more challenges on their way to success.
I do not have the slightest competence and little education to express myself on the subject, but I consider this approach a big risk and a mistake. Regardless of the times and the obviousness of the opportunity to raise the price, it always ended badly. If someone is not convinced of the high price of the Xbox One as one of the main reasons for its market failure (the console had many other problems, and in addition its price was significantly reduced over time), it is enough to recall the history of PlayStation 3 .
The console was the successor to PlayStation 2 , a platform that absolutely dominated the market. The combination of inertia after the extremely popular PlayStation , good price-performance ratio and a good feeling for software partners meant that the more technically advanced Dreamcast and Xbox remained on the sidelines – the first was dragging Sega to the bottom, the second being seen mainly as a hobby project of Microsoft.
PlayStation 3 in the face of the above was doomed to success – especially since the console impressed with its technical capabilities, equipment and announcements of promising games. Meanwhile, at first a dog with a lame leg did not want to buy it: it was terribly expensive. $ 500 and $ 600 (the two versions of the PS3) were not unattainable amounts for the typical Western consumer. However, they meant that the one costing $ 300 was much more often chosen. or $ 400 Xbox 360 from Microsoft – the successor of a niche, unproven platform, from a company with almost no history and traditions in this market.
PlayStation 3 eventually beat the Xbox 360 in the number of copies sold, but it did not do without numerous price reductions and cheaper consoles without some functions. And I would like to remind you that the global economic crisis caused by the fight against COVID-19 is looming. It is not clear what part of us in the first months of the new generation of consoles will be able to afford the luxury of considering purchasing one of them.
Since Spider’s Web remembers about it, both console manufacturers remember it – after all. And they both have a back-up plan. Except that Microsoft has two of them.
PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series will appear in two hardware versions. The manufacturer of the first one decided to launch a version without an optical drive . Contrary to appearances, it is a more than symbolic modification. Such a console will not only be a small amount cheaper to produce, but will also force its owner to buy video games only first-hand, always with additional income for its producer.
Microsoft is taking it a step further , which could prove to be a great move for its business. The cheaper Xbox Series S not only lacks an optical drive, but also has a cheaper graphics chip. The architecture of the entire device is to be identical or very similar to that of the Xbox Series X, but the cheaper hardware is to be devoid of the ability to use ray tracing techniques in generating an image and is to rasterize the image using fewer pixels. In other words, games on the Xbox Series S are to be ray-traced and rendered at a lower resolution.
Important: This is not officially confirmed information. However, they come from sources that are very rarely wrong. If they are true, it is a very clever idea to lower the cost of console production with little complication for game developers. We already know that both consoles are technically too weak to use ray tracing in a wider range than just supplementing the rendered image with additional embellishments – which means that it will be very easy to replace the mechanism with one of the currently commonly used, such as screen space reflections. Rasterization density – or resolution – is a parameter that is also easy to modify in the process of rendering an image in the game engine.
This would mean that Microsoft is – at least in theory – launching a next-generation console at a price significantly lower than its competitor. This, of course, is not a factor that guarantees success, PlayStation 5 will be the successor to the extremely popular platform, and it will be backwards compatible with it. However, if it were hypothetically it would turn out that the Xbox Series S with Xbox Game Pass costs 1.7 thousand. PLN, and PlayStation 5 slim 2.9 thousand PLN … the prices are made up by me, but I have the impression that this could discourage many people planning to buy it from the PS5.
Undoubtedly, the fate of Xbox will be decided by more than the price. However, I suspect that it will not end with the Xbox Series S. Microsoft has the technology to bring the cheapest Xbox into the world of the next generation.
It probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone that the extremely cheap Xbox One S is Microsoft’s best-selling console. Xbox One X, although extremely important in terms of image, is a very small part of the entire base owned by device players. The reasons are obvious: the so-called casual gamers do not feel the need to pay significant amounts to the premium version of their gaming machine. Both are great for playing Fotnite and FIFA with friends. So cheaper is better. And within the reach of a larger group of consumers.
The Xbox One S is probably the only economically viable console for many households. Not only due to frequent and numerous promotions, it is available for purchase only for a few hundred zlotys, in addition, the Xbox One S works with the Xbox Game Pass – guaranteeing access to a large number of attractive games in exchange for a low subscription.
The price of the Xbox One S will only decrease. It already uses a bit of archaic technology, the cost of its production is decreasing year by year. Interestingly, Microsoft does not intend to stop producing it for now, despite the launch of the Xbox Series. It has recently finished production of the Xbox One X , but the One S is still rolling off the production line. Birds are chirping that it is even looking forward to a hardware revision.
The Xbox One S will likely be able to run exactly the same games as the Xbox Series. Undoubtedly inferior in quality and not all, but …
… Some games will not be available because of business conflicts, not technical ones. How is this possible? I mean an Xbox Series feature that could easily be ported to an Xbox One. I have no idea if this will happen, I have no secret sources at Microsoft to have such knowledge. However, it is logical to me.
The Xbox Series will be integrated with Xbox Game Pass, including game streaming. The console is even supposed to provide us with such goodies as the ability to instantly run the game before it is downloaded to its memory – for the time of downloading these tens of gigabytes of data, we will be offered its xCloud version.
Xbox Game Pass streaming integration on Xbox One consoles has not been confirmed or announced. However, there is no technical reason not to introduce it – One consoles are equipped with hardware video stream decoding modules, so the service could be provided at a high level. Such integration would also be in the interest of Microsoft, which admits itself that it is not about hardware, but about commissions and subscriptions. Simply put, an Xbox Series game on Xbox One would not be downloaded, but only streamed.
How much can the Xbox One S cost in a year? 400 PLN?
In exchange for such a low amount and a fee of PLN 40 a month, the poorest kids could still play the latest video games. Without a doubt, having worse experience than their less thrifty or more wealthy colleagues – streaming technology can be unreliable, in addition it introduces unpleasantly sluggish control due to inevitable network delays. The beta-tests of the Xbox Game Pass for Android, including in Poland, prove, however, that this is a smaller problem than we initially thought.
We do not know how much cheaper the Xbox Series S will be and whether it will help Microsoft significantly. However, the Xbox One S with Xbox Game Pass for almost symbolic amounts will be a difficult proposition. Especially since Sony is so reluctant and reluctant to develop its PlayStation Now, which was on selected markets long before Xbox Game Pass. Especially since the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 will most likely be devices beyond the reach of a significant part of us.
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And I think there will be three new-generation Xboxes. One is already on sale
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