Since its release in 2020, the Xbox Series S has been the subject of debate over its value within the current hardware generation lineup due to being less powerful than the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. It turns out, Microsoft’s $300 Series S is more popular than the Series X.
The revelation was spotted in the big Xbox court document leak that has taken the internet by storm this week. One of these documents focuses on Xbox’s April 2022 gaming results. While the document is heavily redacted, one slide shows the “Console Sell-In Mix”. As you can see in the screenshot below, the document reveals that 74.8% of Xbox Series owners own the Series S, with the Series X on 25.1%. As mentioned, these numbers are from early 2022, so may have changed since then.
While this split seems surprising at first glance given the lower power of the Xbox Series S (it’s designed to normally render games at 1440p resolution and 60 frames per second, with a lack of 4K gaming and no disc drive), it should not be entirely surprising from a consumer perspective.
The Xbox Series S is the most affordable console out of the three home systems available in the ninth generation of gaming. Costing $299 (or $349.99 if you buy the 1TB model), the S is a console capable of playing next-gen games like Starfield, even if not at the highest graphical settings. It’s an appealing pitch to most people who care more about the games and less about peak performance.
Microsoft pushing it as the affordable next-gen console didn’t hurt. I’m not sure how that decision will play out going forward for Microsoft, but it’s been a pretty effective strategy so far.
The only mistake imo Microsoft made with the S was not giving it the same ram as the x. Puts more work on devs to optimize vram assets when vram is the cheapest way to make any game look better to a dev.