They would be insane to sell it that high after the last console to sell at $600 didn't sell very well and had to have a price cut after 7 months. Especially since the cost to build for Series X is estimated at $460-$510, consumers will feel ripped off when they read articles about that and realize they bought a console with $90 mark-up on it. I think MS will be smart and aim for $500. 

Guys, Microsoft will release an affordable base console, for sure, just like ps5, but it will definitely will not be this model SAD, 300dollars is great, but the big majority of people want a disc drive, and be able to buy games in the store. There is no way that the only xbox series that would have a disc drive would be the series X which will cost at least 550 dollars.

They might have a normal S edition with disc drive, even if it would be 350dollars, most people would prefer that rather than being limited to downloads only.

I am willing to bet with anyone that the series S-AD will not be the only base console for Microsoft, they couldn't be that dumb, this is a trillion dollar company, surely they hired some intelligent people to research the gaming market?

Disc drive is even more important that 4TF, can you imagine the only choice being either no discs for cheap, or with discs for 550-600? It would be the whole xbox one launch again haha with people just making fun of it all on the internet and news, this generation it was the whole no used discs, the whole new title of the news would be, no discs at all, no second hand, no lending and sharing with your friends, can you imagine the uproar?

Completely wrong. It would be like a weaker xbox one releasing in 2013, limited to 540p and costing less.

Disc drive is even more important that 4TF, can you imagine the only choice being either no discs for cheap, or with discs for 550-600? It would be the whole xbox one launch again haha with people just making fun of it all on the internet and news, this generation it was the whole no used discs, the whole new title of the news would be, no discs at all, no second hand, no lending and sharing with your friends, can you imagine the uproar?

5 - The cost of the series X is definitely more than 460dollars, I have no idea how you came up with that number but a 12TF next gen graphics + good CPU + controller + SSD + motherboard, power unit, antennas, case, cables, RAM, 4K bluray drive + cooling system + shipping + building costs + labour costs definitely costs more than 500 dollars, do your research properly.

In your scenario, a Series X game doing 1440p/30 fps would be 540p/30 fps on Series S. That would be a very demanding game with high fidelity graphics, that same product would probably be around 1080p on PS5, assuming current rumors are accurate.

It seems like the obvious solution is simply lowering some visual settings to boost resolution on a Series S version. Whether that be lighting, shadows, draw distance, etc. Hence, the same solutions we've used on PC games for decades.

I think you assume AAA games on a 9TF PS5 might have a focus on 1440p-4K/30 fps. I mean it seems highly unlikely Sony will make 1080p games on PS5. So if the next Horizon:ZD and God of War are 1440p/30 fps, its very likely the Series S could handle those same visuals at 900p-1080p.

Again, my comment assumes rumored specs are true.

Good idea for a handheld... Just a shame AMD doesn't have any viable hand-held mobile technology to make such a thing feasible.

I have hundreds of digital games... And there are others who likely fall into the same camp.
A digital only device isn't the end of the world for some.

More options for consumers isn't always a bad thing.

Microsoft could in theory pull an Xbox 360 and release an optional Blu-Ray drive attachment, that way they are profiting from the disc drive for those who want the cheaper console.
Xbox 360 external HD DVD drive:

How does FLOPS relate to costs?

We don't have any real info on any other component to ascertain real costs anyway... We don't know if the CPU's have been bastardized with reduced/removed caches for example.

A 4k Blu-Ray Drive shouldn't be more expensive than a non-4k drive, it's just additional read layers... In-fact many PC OEM Blu-Ray drives just needed a firmware update to enable support for BDXL format discs for free.

That's almost accurate except that going from 1440p to 900p isn't going to double the fps. If a game runs at the exact same graphics settings on ps5 at 1440p/30fps they would have to scale it down all the way to 720p to hit 30fps on Series S. And if a game would be 1080p on ps5, they would need to drop it to 540p on Series S.

The Switch might be able to get away with 540p but that's because it's a handheld. On a 55 inch tv it would look like a giant smudge and there's just no way MS would allow developers to release 720p or even 540p games on their "next gen" console. They will likely target 1080p on Series S, cut visual fidelity in half across the board so it can run on 4Tflops, and we'll be playing the same games on Series X at native 4k and checkerboard 4k on ps5. This is why I pray to the gaming gods that this whole Lockhart thing is not real.  

Now of course you could lower some graphics settings on pc. However, console games don't have graphics settings because they are completely optimized for the specific hardware. Therefore, they tend not to use rendering effects that are too expensive with a relatively small gain in visuals. 

The problem in this situation would be the lack of options, either no disc for 4Tf cheap or disc on 12Tf expensive. He is asking for a disc on the 4Tf for a little more money because quite a lot wouldn't want to have only the no disc option for the entry model.

That's almost accurate except that going from 1440p to 900p isn't going to double the fps. If a game runs at the exact same graphics settings on ps5 at 1440p/30fps they would have to scale it down all the way to 720p to hit 30fps on Series S. And if a game would be 1080p on ps5, they would need to drop it to 540p on Series S.

The Switch might be able to get away with 540p but that's because it's a handheld. On a 55 inch tv it would look like a giant smudge and there's just no way MS would allow developers to release 720p or even 540p games on their "next gen" console. They will likely target 1080p on Series S, cut visual fidelity in half across the board so it can run on 4Tflops, and we'll be playing the same games on Series X at native 4k and checkerboard 4k on ps5. This is why I pray to the gaming gods that this whole Lockhart thing is not real.  

Now of course you could lower some graphics settings on pc. However, console games don't have graphics settings because they are completely optimized for the specific hardware. Therefore, they tend not to use rendering effects that are too expensive with a relatively small gain in visuals. 

Developers can adjust resolution and graphics settings if necessary. Modern engines are generally designed to scale well, your last paragraph ignores that.

For example, some X1 games weren't just a resolution drop vs PS4. They also adjusted graphics settings if necessary. Meanwhile PS4 Pro and X1X sometimes have higher graphics settings along with resolution. You're suggesting console games don't benefit much from tweaking graphics settings, that simply is not reality.l

The odds of Series X and PS5 having 1080p content seems highly unlikely or rare if it ever happns. So we don't need to think about unlikely scenarios, most games next might be 4K or close to even on PS5.

Hence, you're creating unlikely scenarios to make Series S seem like a bad idea.

PS4 had 1.8TF and generally hit 1080p. PS5 probably has 5x the GPU power in practice. Therefore Sony could still hit 4K and still make significantly better looking games. Espeically when you consider X1X hit 4K in something like RDR2.

The ps4 pro and X1X didn't have totally different graphics settings. They were designed to be 4k consoles, not next gen consoles and anyone who doesn't have a 4k tv would hardly be able to tell the difference. Games on X1X could potentially look a ton better but developers didn't make any game that really made good use of the hardware. Instead the games were exactly the same as on the base consoles and all the extra processing power was used on 4k and/or 60fps. 

4k Is nice but it's a tremendous waste of resources on consoles as most people can hardly tell the difference unless they have a 65inch tv. That's why so few people upgraded to a mid-gen console. So if we're talking about things like Ray Tracing there's no way developers would compromise on that in favor of native 4k. Keep in mind that even a 2080Ti can barely hit 30fps in most current gen games with Ray Tracing enabled and native 4k. 

Fact is that developers will always have to make compromises if they're building an ambitious game and resolution is usually pretty low on the priority list. Just look at how many games are 720p on Xone, and is that really such a big deal? Not at all, because while Red Dead Redemption on the 360 runs at almost the same resolution as RDR2 on Xone, RDR2 does look a helluva lot better.