That is a very dangerous thing to postulate. (The bandwidth in the Series S is perfectly ok, though). I've seen several posts that go the way of "If you only have 1/4th the resolution, you only need 1/4th of the ram". Apart from being wrong, the memory capacity in the Series S is the main concern voiced by developers all around the world, and for a good reason.

Ram isn't easily scalable. You can decrease texture size and geometry data for sure. That is half? a third? of the memory

The ssd doesn't really help either. Ssds are good for streaming, but there still is boatloads of data you need in memory, all the time. Raytracing is the buzzword now. Want rt? You need the data structures in ram. Want better shadows? You need much bigger cache in ram. Want better lighting? You need bigger data structures in ram. Want better AI? Need bigger game code and data in ram. Want other stuff I forgot to mention? You need all the data structures in ram.

Let's make it very clear: If you have to support Series S, the other consoles WILL pay the price for it.

The CPU speed is slower than the One X?

This means (smt will be used almost always I assume):

Xbox Series X = 3,6ghz
PS5 = 3,5ghz
Xbox Series S = 3,4ghz

Intresting theres a differnce in cpu speeds between the X and S too.
You could ofc argue that since it needs to feed the GPU less (because of lower resulutions) that might make up for some of that.

True.

How about physical games? Wouldn't I get better deals in the long run? I don't know the overall prices and discounts on Xbox if I decide to play most of multi plat games.

Well if you're planning to play a majority of your games on Series S, and you don't always buy them at launch, that is a real concern. But in terms of deals or value, you won't find a better one then Game Pass. Depends on how much control you want to have over what you buy/play, and when you can.

If you're an active gamer who plays more than just a few different games each year, and you plan to have Xbox as your main system, you should go for the Series X.

"The PS5 features an incredibly fast SSD with 5.5GB/s read bandwidth. This is faster than anything that is available out there. How can developers can take advantage of this and what will it result to, and how does this compare to Series X’s 2.4GB/s SSD read bandwidth?

For a system to take the full advantage of the next gen CPU/GPUs the amount of data needed to be streamed in and out of memory is pretty big. That’s the main reason why both console manufacturers went with the SSDs and a specialized I/O approach. This approach was pretty much a necessity. You could for example get similar results with average SSD speeds and more memory. You would have to preload more game data into memory, but on the other hand your SSD wouldn’t need to fetch that much data every second."

https://gamingbolt.com/scorn-interview-storytelling-inspirations-structure-and-more

And btw, are you implying that the PS5 was always going to hold back the XSX? You know, since it has slower memory, slower GPU, and slower CPU? Because I really don't think it would have.

The Play Station CPU has variable frequency at up to 3.5 GHz; so you should probably compare all with that in mind.

The 3.5ghz is very unlikely to be with SMT and in general, the Play Station CPU will be lower than both X and S and this is at least the general consensus if you look at different sources. And they are all assuming what is probably true, that the 3.5ghz is without SMT or they would have specified it as it is the same CPU than the Xbox Series and they both use a different frequency for SMT.

https://play4.uk/technology-news/xbox-series-s-cpu-faster-than-the-ps5s-cpu/#:~:text=Xbox%20Series%20S%20CPU%20Faster%20Than%20The%20PS5%E2%80%99s,faster%20than%20the%20CPU%20of%20the%20PlayStation%205.

https://www.psu.com/news/the-xbox-series-s-cpu-is-faster-than-the-ps5s-cpu/

https://www.t3.com/news/xbox-series-s-has-faster-cpu-than-ps5-and-supports-ray-tracing

And I can go on but you get the point (and if you bing xbox series s cpu faster than play station five, you see all major outlets there). The "up to" speed from Sony is very likely without SMT and everyone is probably agreeing with that even without knowing 100% for sure.

So it is probably more:

Without SMT:

Xbox Series X = 3,8ghz
Xbox Series S = 3,6ghz
PS5 = 3,5ghz

With SMT:

Xbox Series X = 3,6ghz
Xbox Series S = 3,4ghz
PS5 = 3,?ghz (3,3ghz is my guess out of the blue, but it should be lower than 3.4ghz for sure)

But it does not matter anyway. I believe the bottleneck in the S is probably going to be the memory if you are looking to point out something.

While they will require less memory than the X (textures?), going from 12GB to 7GB (some rumors are talking about 6GB) for games will be the weakest point.

How is "with variable frequency" all time? :)
You cannot say "variable" frequency" and then 3.5ghz on all the time.

Not the thread to talk about that anyway, so let's assume that we do not know. And everything is up in the air (we will probably never know actually).

And like you said, does not matter. CPU is not going to hold back any console. Ram is probably is :)

You said: "PS5 has SMT on all the time. 3.5 GHz with SMT". 

But I was not talking about what you said anyway. The "you" was in general (as "someone cannot", my bad) as I looked up your link and even some others and yes, they say "3.5ghz with SMT all the time" basically and then "variable frequency". This is just weird wording and assuming that while SMT is on all the time, the frequency is not really 3.5ghz on average (just the highest possible) compared to the X/S with fixed frequencies is not crazy :) 

I think a lot of the GPU/bandwidth disparity will be solved by the fact that PS5/XSX will be expending a lot of their juice to hit (or try to hit) 4K, while the Series S won't have this pressure and like Switch's portable mode will be able to get away with a lot through opting for much lower resolutions.

If MS wants to go the services route, and it ends up working for them, they will almost have to take another step in the phone upgrade direction. They can either make it harder on themselves and support XBSS by having it play 720p-900p upscaled after 2025 let's say, or they make it clear that console will no longer be supported. Then make you upgrade to the 12TF ($299), or let's say 30TF ($499) console, in order to play new content. Either that or maybe use your XBSS for xCloud streaming if you can, assuming the service is fully operational and worthy by that point in time.

How things play out with supporting XB1 will partially influence how MS moves forward. If XB1 is too much of a hindrance, then XBSS will probably be discontinued much sooner than XB1 will be. Aside from XBSS potential xCloud use, if that pans out. Otherwise they would drop XBSS and force an upgrade at some time not to long after the next top tier model comes out, and the existing top tier get's a smaller cheaper digital model. If they kept the upgrade path from this gen, that means XBSS would be good for at least 4 years, maybe 6 max before it's support ended. For $300 or $25 a month starting in 2020 and lasting until 2025 ish, that wouldn't be too bad at all to remain fully invested in the ecosystem before a necessary upgrade.

Whether they just make it a consistent upgrade or call it a new gen, odds are unless you're streaming, you'll have to upgrade much sooner than you had to this time around. I wouldn't be surprised if MS is being careful not to push gamers to quickly this time around since it burned them harsh when they tried it with XB1. They may very well just be taking baby steps towards a consistently hardware upgraded services model.