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

[Mr Puggsly]

Doctor_MG said:

DekutheEvilClown said:

Some people really hate the Series S for no obvious reason, like its mere existence just seems to irk people. I think it was a great idea, implemented well, that had the misfortune of launching during the generation in which Xbox hardware imploded.

If MS had went with just a Series X and a Series X Digital edition then they would be even further behind this gen, I’m very confident of that.

For consumers it’s great. A very cheap console that lets you actually play all next gen games(regardless of the resolution or FPS, some people are just happy to have that opportunity to play at all.)

I do suspect MS made quite a large loss per model though, especially at the start of the generation.

I think there are obvious reasons to not like the Series S. One obvious example is that it has been a hassle for developers to port games to *sometimes*. Which means that some games take longer to come to Xbox or, worst case, don't come at all which affects Series X owners too. 

That said, the people that don't like the Series S often don't have a Series X...which I feel like the Series X owners are the only ones with a legitimate reason to not like the console. In addition, I think there is the very real point that people don't think about: how many games are coming to the Series consoles BECAUSE of the Series S? That number isn't known. You reference how without the Series S that MS would be even further behind this generation. I believe that's true. Which means that Series S could be the reason that some developers have a reason to port their game to the Series consoles to begin with from a profit standpoint. In which case, it could very well be a wash. Series S causes some hardship for developers, but it also creates opportunities for others. 

In addition, I think Series S development is great for Switch 2 owners. Switch 2 isn't on the level of Series S from a raw hardware perspective, but doing the work to port a game to the Series S means that the Switch 2 is a hop, skip, and a jump away instead of this dumbfounding and impossible seeming leap 

Generally speaking, the games that took longer to come to Xbox have been moneyhats by Sony. Meanwhile, hundreds of other games had no real issues. Even if they were technically demanding.

Every modern game generally works pretty well on low end PC and portable PCs. The way games are built these days just makes them easy to scale. As long as the hardware has a decent CPU and a lot of RAM to work with. GPU can clearly be worked around.