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ConservagameR on 13 March 2023
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Norion said:
ConservagameR said:

It depends on what MS and it's customers demand and expect. MS being a PC company for much longer than a console company, who's been trying to bridge the gap for quite some time now, very well doesn't or won't care as much as the gen goes on if the Series S games are far inferior to the Series X. As long as the games play well enough and aren't terribly broken and glitched, if you want better graphics and smoother framerates, find a way to upgrade to the higher tier X model.

There's also the possibility that as time goes on, if Series S continues to sell better, especially if the gap widens in it's favor, MS very well may ask devs to shift some effort from Series X to Series S. You wouldn't want to take too much away from your top tier X model, but if you've clearly got a much larger audience playing on the lower tier S model, it wouldn't be crazy to see MS ask to take a bit of the polish time away from X version games and use that time to improve S version games a bit.

The XB console space can work a lot like the PC space as you've mentioned, as long as the consoles remain much simpler to operate vs PC's. Offering a few different console game modes like performance vs resolution is about as far as it needs to go. As long as the lowest tier present gen console experience is just good enough, casual console gamers will accept it as long as the price is right. Some of them are even accepting it on last gens XB One right now, so present gens Series S would probably seem like a worthy upgrade to some of those casual gamers.

I don't see it continuing to sell better as time goes on cause I think most console gamers won't want to play versions of games like GTA 6 and Witcher 4 that run poorly. With stock getting increasingly normalized now I see Series S making up a smaller and smaller share of Xbox Series sales as this gen goes on.

There's plenty of people playing GTA 5 on last gen consoles who haven't bothered to put in the effort to upgrade. Now if present gen sales take off soon with hardware availability, like they are for PS5, and GTA 5 sales for present gen also skyrocket, then I'd say you have a point, but I don't see that happening. Lots of people bought GTA 5 for PS3 and never upgraded to the PS4 version, including me. As long as GTA 5 keeps being supported on last gen, lot's of casuals will keep playing it there.

If the worldwide economy finally stabilizes and starts rising again, then I could see XB Series X sales closing the gap with Series S and possibly overcoming it, but if things continue as they are, or get worse, Series S will very likely continue to keep selling better. Whether pricing stays as is, or eventually drops a bit, that still makes the much lower cost of a Series S an appealing purchase from that perspective, especially for casuals.

MS isn't looking at the gaming market in terms of what's best for devs, they're looking at it as what's best for consumers pockets. They haven't forgotten about the devs, they just aren't catering to them anywhere near as much as Sony is. MS has tried to beat Sony at their game but has failed like others have, so they're veering off and trying something a bit different, like others have, but in their own way. Somebody is always winning and losing, it just depends on who and how much.

I'm not making a case that this is what's best for all consumers or the gaming industry as a whole, I'm just pointing out that Series S makes sense based on the business case MS has made for it so far. Whether that case will still make sense once the economy is back on track is another thing. Maybe MS has always planned to discontinue the S mid gen, make X the new low end model and add a new upgraded model as the top tier. If Sony does launch the PS5 Slim this holiday, how MS reacts within a year of that will tell us a lot.