Now that pricing and spec details have been released by Microsoft regarding their next-gen consoles, a question likely on everyone's minds is how do the the two compare. The Xbox Series X is still Microsoft's flagship console, but the Xbox Series S is more cost-friendly. For many players, it's Xbox Series X versus the Xbox Series S, and here's how the two consoles compare.
After leaks and much speculation, Microsoft officially unveiled the Xbox Series S and included both pricing and spec details. The low price of the Series S caught many people off guard, but the all-digital console comes with a few caveats. A day later, Microsoft announced additional details and an official price for the Xbox Series X. The back-to-back announcements have caused excitement within the Xbox community. However, people still need to decide which version of the next-gen console they want to purchase come holiday 2020.
In terms of specs, first and foremost on everyone's minds is probably the graphic capabilities. The Xbox Series X has an impressive eight-core 3.8GHz (3.6GHz with SMT) custom AMD 7nm CPU, and 12 teraflops of GPU that can run 120 frames per second, meaning it has two times the power of the Xbox One X. The Xbox Series X also has a frame rate of up to 120 frames per second. While the CPU and GPU details for the Series S weren't shared in the console's official trailer, players do know the Xbox Series S is capable of running 120 frames per second and supports ray tracing just like the Series X. The Series S, however, has a target resolution of 1440p with 4K upscaling, while the Series X can support up to 8K resolution.
Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S: Which Deal Is Better?
The Xbox Series S is an all-digital console, meaning it has no disc drive whatsoever. The Xbox Series X, however, has an HD Blu-ray disc drive. Besides resolution and disc drives, the real difference between the two consoles comes from storage space. The Xbox Series S comes with 512 GB of storage, which is especially small for an all-digital console. The Xbox Series X comes with almost double that, at 1 TB of storage space.
Microsoft has confirmed that the same games will run on the Xbox Series X and the Series S. However, the Series S is most likely to appeal to players who want to stream their video games using Microsoft's Xbox Game Pass and new xCloud services. The games will also definitely look better on the Xbox Series X.
For now, that's all we know about the specs of Microsoft's next-gen consoles. It's an interesting marketing plan, since the two versions will most likely appeal to two different consumer bases. The Xbox Series X and the Xbox Series S are both scheduled to release on November 10th, 2020.