Is the Xbox Series S Truly Next-Gen?

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Gaming has been popular ever since they were developed for computers as well as for consoles in the 1960s. Since then gaming has grown leaps and bounds, and today it is a business worth more than 100 billion dollars a year. Some of the early games like PacMan, Space Invaders, and Donkey Kong played a big role in increasing the popularity of gaming around the world. Electronic gaming was further revolutionized by the introduction of gaming consoles. Initially dominated by Nintendo and Sega, they gradually ceded ground to Sony PlayStation due to its superior third party support. And with the introduction of Xbox by Microsoft, the competition stiffened further.

The introduction of gaming consoles also increased the popularity of e sports, with most major gaming titles becoming available for both PC as well as gaming consoles. Numerous e sports betting guide became available, helping novices place bets on various e-sporting events held around the world, making gaming even more lucrative for developers.

And now, the much-awaited successor to the third generation of gaming consoles, Xbox One have finally been announced by Microsoft. Named as Xbox series X and Xbox series S, both these consoles will be available, starting November 10th, 2020.  While the series X is being marketed as the premium gaming console, series S provides a more affordable alternative costing 200 dollars less than the series X.

Key differences between Series X and Series S

There are two main differences between the two consoles. The first difference being in the GPU. Series X contains top of the line 12.5 teraflops of GPU performance at 1.825 GHz, while the series S has a more modest 4 teraflops of performance at 1.55 GHz.

The other major difference between the two consoles is in the resolution. With a more powerful processor, series X can run games at 4k resolution at 60 fps, while the resolution of the S series is capped at 1440p, but can hit up to 120 fps.

Other minor differences include a smaller storage capacity of 512 GB in series S compared to 1 TB of series X, and a RAM of 10 GB in S series compared to 16 GB in the X series. The memory can be upgraded by a Seagate storage expansion card, but the cost of it has not been revealed yet.

How does series S compare to the older Xbox One X?

On paper, Xbox one X seems to have a higher GPU performance of 6 teraflops compared to 4 teraflops in series S, but the newer console runs on a newer architecture of AMD’s RDNA compared to the previous GCN architecture, which provides a 25% increase in performance. With significant improvements in CPU performance and the use of an SSD drive, gamers can expect a smoother playing experience compared to the older version.

Series S has some next-gen features like VRS, mesh shaders and ray tracing that provides a gaming experience as good as the X series, but at a lower resolution.

Both series X and Series S will be able to play the same games. And thanks to Xbox Game Pass, backward compatibility should not be an issue for new consoles.

With Series S, Microsoft has given a preference to frame rates and visual quality over higher resolution allowing for a better playing experience for the gamers. According to developers, the new Series S will not hold back the next generation of gaming, but it will require the developers to strike a balance within their games.

Although series S doesn’t have the fastest hardware, when paired with the various subscription plans offered by Microsoft, seems to be a good value for money, and could be an ideal gaming console for most people.

Who is the winner: Series S or One X?

At the last, we can conclude that it really depends upon you, whether you want to consider Xbox Series S a next-gen console or not. It is in way like Apple vs Samsung or maybe T-Series vs PewDiePie, it depends from individual to individual. It depends on whether you want resolution or frames per second, whether you want the raw graphics power, or want to stick to playable games along with the new features. Here are all the points you can consider to select the winner:

• Raw graphics power: Xbox One X wins here, with 6 Teraflops of graphics power compared to 4 Teraflops of the Series S. But think it over again, can the Xbox One X really reap 100% of its graphics power?
• Storage: One X has native 1 TB storage compared to 512 GB of the Series S, but expandable external storage really voids how much native storage you get. Until you have enough free space to download and run your first game, its okay, right?
• Loading speeds: This is somewhere the Series S wins. Built with NVMe SSDs, the fastest on the planet till date, they will rule out One X in loading times, and that too by a huge margin.
• Raw Memory power: The One X had 12 GB RAM, but the Series S has 10 GB RAM only. But there is another fact to consider: The One X is powered by GDDR5 RAM, while the Series has GDDR6 RAM, so a faster but lesser RAM on the Series S.
• Games: This is somewhere the Series S will win definitely. All new games, for at least 7 years will arrive to the Series S. We can expect new titles to come to the Xbox One X for only a couple of years, to the max.
• Gameplay: This is one-to-one battle. Series S has faster loading times, a smoother performance, pushing all the way up to 120 FPS, and real-time ray tracing along with mesh shaders and more at the cost of resolution. It gets capped at 1440p. 
  However, the One X can give "true 4K" gaming at 60 FPS, which the "next-gen" Series S cannot. So it depends, whether you want better looking games, or want higher resolutions.

So. by now you may have picked the winner. It may be One X or Series S, but here is what I think:

            

           The Series S is really not "next-gen". The main bottlenecks are the amount of RAM it has. 10 GB RAM is really falling short, specially in demanding games like Warzone, which consume up to 14 GB of RAM. The next bottleneck is the amount of native storage it gives. Back in 2013, the original Xbox One had 500 GB of storage, how much does 512 GB makes sense 7 years later also? The next bottleneck is the GPU. 4 Teraflops is really not efficient in 2020, and although Microsoft claims that the Series S will be capable of 1440p gaming at 120 FPS, along with real time Ray Tracing and mesh shaders, I really doubt it. A $999 graphics card coupled with a $500 processor is able to do that. How can a 300$ console do the same thing? I really do not believe it, and might get proved a gimmick at launch. 

            To conclude, I can say that buying a Xbox One X will be a better option than the Series S. The One X makes more sense than this "gimmick" console. It only proves that Microsoft is trying to promote the Game Pass very badly, by putting the quality of games at stake! Every game that launches must have to balanced between the Series X and Series S, thus the games cannot reap the 100% of the Series X. Hats off to Sony that they avoided a PS5 "Slim" console, and I respect their decision of bringing out two consoles at different price points by giving up on the Disc Drive rather than cutting on the specs.