Now all of that being said, I'm not against Xbox having an entry level model available. However, I think they are going about it all wrong. What they need to do is have the Pro model from the previous gen be treated as the entry level model the next-generation. If they had made Xbox One X a more balanced system that leaned a bit less heavily into GPU and more heavily into CPU and storage improvements, Xbox One X could have taken the place of Series S in the early part of this generation, getting a smaller refresh in 2020 alongside Series X. This is what Xbox needs to be doing in my opinion, instead of having an entry level console like Series S each generation that then must be supported by developers the entire generation, instead treat the mid-gen Pro model from the previous generation as the entry level model for the first half of the next generation.
So we should have seen something like this:
2013- Xbox One- 7 years of required dev support from 2013-2020, then devs are allowed to skip it if they choose.
2017- Xbox One X- 8 years of required dev support from 2017-2025, then devs are allowed to skip it if they choose.
2020- Xbox Series X- 9 years of required dev support from 2020-2029, then devs are allowed to skip it if they choose.
2025- Xbox Series E (for lack of a better name)- 8 years of required developer support from 2025-2033, then devs are allowed to skip it if they choose.
2029- Xbox Series 2- 8 years of required developer support from 2029-2037, then devs are allowed to skip it if they choose.
And so on an so forth. That is a far superior idea than to release a budget entry level model at the beginning of the generation that then must be supported by devs for the entire 8-9 years of the generation. With my idea, those who buy a mid-gen Pro console at launch get a full generation worth of use out of it, whereas the $500 at launch in 2017 Xbox One X is already starting to be skipped by developers in 2022, just 5 years later, because Xbox decided to replace it with Series S instead of designing it to be better balanced at launch so that it could operate as the entry level Xbox at the beginning of this gen.
