While gamers from all around the world wait for the official pricing of the next-generation consoles, Microsoft has officially confirmed the long-rumored Xbox Series S console. The information was initially revealed on the Xbox Twitter page, soon after the console renders and pricing was leaked online.
While the Xbox Series X is Microsoft’s flagship console of this generation, the Xbox Series S will be an affordable option for gamers who don’t want to spend much and isn’t so bothered about having the best graphics and higher framerates. The new console looks entirely different from the design point-of-view as compared to the Xbox Series X and Microsoft claims that the newly announced console is the smallest they have ever made. Microsoft says that the Series S is 60% smaller than the Series X. Just as in the past with the Xbox One S, the company decided to reuse the white color theme for the new Xbox Series S. The company has also aggressively priced the console at just $299 (Approx. 1249 AED). It should be noted that the Xbox Series S is a cut down version of the Series X console with respect to performance.
Microsoft revealed through their promo video that the Xbox Series S is an all-digital console and is aimed at 1440p gaming with up to 120fps framerates. The console also supports features such as variable-rate shading, variable refresh rate, ultra-low latency gaming, DirectX ray-tracing, 4K streaming media playback, and 4K upscaling for Xbox games. The console also features a custom NVMe 512GB SSD with the Xbox Velocity Architecture for faster game loading times and seamless game switching, along with full support for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Although, a 512GB seems quite low for today’s games.
Xbox Series S
🎮 All-digital next-gen console
🏃 Faster load times
📈 Higher frame rates
🌎 Richer, more dynamic worlds
🔥 Next generation gaming performance
🔎 In our smallest Xbox ever#PowerYourDreams pic.twitter.com/5GxCBiSVtO— Xbox (@Xbox) September 8, 2020
The Xbox Series S will have only 4 TFlops of computational power as compared to the Xbox Series X’s beefier 12.15 TFlops. That’s quite a downgrade on the AMD RDNA 2 GPU cores and is also lower than the previous generation Xbox One X’s 6 TFlops. The APU will only feature 20 RDNA 2.0 CUs as compared to the 52 CUs of the Xbox Series X, along with 10GB GDDR6. The console will use the 8-core AMD ZEN 2 CPU cores, and with clock speeds, running at 3.6 GHz speeds.
The Microsoft Xbox Series S is set to be released on November 10. However, the company hasn’t officially unveiled the pricing of the Xbox Series X. While the company is expected to make an announcement soon, Sony has yet to announce the official pricing of the PlayStation 5 console and its digital-only variant.
