Wasn't a bad move, and maybe the only way to reach the level of hardware sales they've gotten this gen.
Series X, even if there was also a digital for $399 at launch, wouldn't have sold as well without the Series S.
Series S should've had at least a bit more RAM, and storage. MS should've just ate the cost. Worst case, they should've charged say $329 at launch.
Series S is decent, but was poorly executed in ways. The negative press due to dev issues was worse than just charging a bit more for better hardware.
The proprietary storage expansion drives and ridiculous pricing for them, plus only having 1 storage SKU available at launch were all terrible decisions.
Only single SKU plan that might've worked would've been disc drive Series X for $399 at launch. Fewer overall sales early on, but might've had more legs.

Almost seems like they decided prior to launch that hardware wasn't really important, and that the future was going to be more service oriented, period.

Had there been no Series S, I firmly believe XBSX would not have hit 20mil. Series S accounted for nearly 75% of XBSXS sales figures through until 2022 (as leaked in court documents), and LTD Series S accounts for >50% (according to Matt Piscatella US estimated) of total sales. Xbox would have been off to a far weaker start this gen, and I cannot even imagine what sales figures would be looking like right now.

To me, Series S has also proved to MS that they could focus solely on a $299-$399 next gen console without a subsidy and basically get away with it. Let third parties build high end console like XB devices, even if they're practically a PC in a console like box. Same with handheld. MS could build a $399-$499 handheld and let third parties build higher end XB handhelds for them. Maybe MS only sells a single SKU, a dockable $499 XB handheld and that's it, besides third party.

Was a bad idea then, is a bad idea now, will be a bad idea in the future, should some clueless person have a craving for bad ideas.

Neither. The problems of Xbox hardware go well beyond Series S.
Series S did get more people into Game Pass and such and Series probably wouldn't have outsold the OG Xbox if not for Series S.

Isn't the Series S more than half of the sales? There wouldn't be a next generation Xbox if there wasn't an S and the console was sitting at 16 million right now.

Id say both the series S and series X were bad ideas

It's too early to see the full impact on game development since many big games will still be coming to this generation of consoles several years from now but in terms of sales it worked out since Xbox would've had an awful 2021 and 2022 otherwise. Though in the end that didn't matter much long term since they still have given up on pushing hardware sales.

For the former my expectation is the Series S bottleneck will contribute to various games during the next cross-gen period being on PS5 but not the Xbox Series due to not wanting to bother putting the extra effort in optimizing for it. I wonder if Sony will release a Series S like PS6 since a proper powerful PS6 will be at least as expensive as the PS5 Pro I imagine so that would be cutting out a lot of people if that's the cheapest PS6 so if they want to avoid a big sales decline they might be forced to do that.

It was a good idea tied to a poor brand.

Good ideas are a dime a dozen too, it's the execution of the overall brand strategy which is a lot harder to get right.

By and large I haven't heard much fuss from developers that the XBox Series S is some huge hang up in their dev pipeline. If anything the hardware that devs have as is is too powerful and they're drowning trying to make games for that level of hardware as is. 

Just some recent popular RPGs

https://www.purexbox.com/news/2025/04/digital-foundry-praises-clair-obscur-expedition-33-but-xbox-series-s-is-a-sore-point

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/baldurs-gate-3-is-finally-adding-split-screen-co-op-on-xbox-series-s/

https://www.thegamer.com/black-myth-wukongs-director-confirms-xbox-delay-series-s-memory/


AI 'insight'

Games with notable performance or graphical issues on Xbox Series S include Star Wars Jedi: Survivor and RoboCop: Rogue City, while others like Orcs Must Die! 3 and Delta Force are also mentioned for poor optimization. These issues often stem from the Series S's less powerful hardware and Microsoft's previous requirement for cross-platform parity between the Xbox Series X and S, which can lead to compromises in development for the weaker console.


Yeah the problem is it's too powerful ;)