Now that we're nearly 5 years in, was Series S a good or a bad idea?

[Mr Puggsly]

RolStoppable said:

The state of Microsoft's console business answers this question.

It was a bad idea right from the start, but it got a big break during the semiconductor shortage which made it sell more than it would have otherwise. But even that has been a double-edged sword, because while Microsoft could sell all the S consoles that would have sat on store shelves otherwise, it led to the problem that the amount of Xbox Series consoles out there that have PS5-level hardware is quite low; under 20m through five years on the market. It makes third parties think if they should even bother with Xbox versions of their games when it's a hassle to get the game to work on the S as well.

While it did allow Microsoft to undercut the PS5 by $100 as far as the entry price is concerned, it came with the caveat of being a heavily gimped Xbox Series whereas the digital-only PS5 was still a proper PS5 with the exception of a disc drive.

I agree with basically none of this.

1) If the Series X was the only option, their market share would likely be smaller.

2) Series S ultimately plays the same games at PS5 and Series X. For much of the market, that's fine. Many PC gamers aren't using specs at par with PS5 either. Much of the most popular games actually work really well on Series S and low end PCs.

3) Xbox evidently has big a enough userbase to justify many ports. I also assume the hardware itself makes ports easy. The platforms that lost support quickly generally sold less than 15 million units (Vita and Wii U are good examples).

4) I agree there is extra work to make a game play well on Series S. But a lot of these games are designed to work on even less powers PCs, portable PCs, etc. So lets not exaggerate how much work it actually requires. Developers have put much more effort getting games to work on Switch.

5) The only way MS could have made their market share grow is by having more/better exclusives AND selling all their hardware at a lower price. But they didn't really do either. So I guess they are content with their current profits.