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Should I buy a Xbox Series S?

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
I'm going lose my mind if another person comes in here suggesting he buy a fairytale machine that they made 12 of to say they were selling $399 that's currently sold out everywhere. Hard enough to find a regular ps5.........
 
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I got one last week so...

People win the lottery every now n then too. It's hard to get any of these consoles right now but the PS5 DE is especially rare. Quantities produced are seemingly much less than the standard edition (not hard to figure out why as they are losing money on each DE sold, but are likely breaking even or making a little bit of profit with each standard sale). In any case, it is somewhat absurd for people to recommend the PS5 DE when finding one is like getting hit by lightning. Aside from that, OP specifically mentioned wanting an Xbox of some sort but people can't resist turning this into a console war.
 

THE DUCK

voted poster of the decade by bots
People win the lottery every now n then too. It's hard to get any of these consoles right now but the PS5 DE is especially rare. Quantities produced are seemingly much less than the standard edition (not hard to figure out why as they are losing money on each DE sold, but are likely breaking even or making a little bit of profit with each standard sale). In any case, it is somewhat absurd for people to recommend the PS5 DE when finding one is like getting hit by lightning. Aside from that, OP specifically mentioned wanting an Xbox of some sort but people can't resist turning this into a console war.

Exactly. I got one at launch (sold out in 60 seconds) so I was extremely lucky. But I've been looking for friend now for months for the DE with no luck.
 

FastOrc

Member
Exactly. I got one at launch (sold out in 60 seconds) so I was extremely lucky. But I've been looking for friend now for months for the DE with no luck.
The same here, got one on day one. i feel so lucky, i also tried the lottery because of my luck.. but no joy. :messenger_tears_of_joy:
 

dcmk7

Banned
I originally posted a sincere response about my real life experience with XSS - a legitimate attempt to be helpful towards the OP by offering a nuanced look at why it's been a good console for my needs.

For my efforts I was attacked by SonyGAF, generally fanboys who do not own a XSS trying to tell me - a person who actually owns an XSS - that they somehow know better than I do because reasons.

I noticed you didn't respond to their dumb ass attempts to derail the thread and turn this into another warrior slap fight. Interesting. 🤔😉

'Attacked', your original post got quoted twice ... and you responded to one of those by deciding to escalate by calling him a transparent troll.. so exactly who is attacking who now?

Ironically, you seem to have done more to derail the thread than 'SonyGaf'.
 
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yamaci17

Member
We really need "average" resolution numbers in certain games. I checked out AC Valhalla Series S gameplay and the majority of it looks like 720p-900p honestly. I can't call that "brief dip".

For example, Cyberpunk 2077 is limited to 1080p 30 fps on Series S, because a possible 60 FPS performance mode would mean it would drop below 720p and possibly hover around 540p. Even the Series X renders that game with an average of 1300-1440p (according to VG Tech, elanalistadebits and various other Youtube channels I've been following).

Series S does not only dip to 720p. It literally stays there in games such as Valhalla. You can call these games unoptimized all you want, but that won't change a fact.

One thing I can't say for certain is, some people report that it looks good. I can't comment on that...

My take is simple: if you're okay with 30 FPS, and you want native/1080p/1440p resolution, you can SAFELY get Series S. It won't DROP below 1080p at 30 FPS.

But at 60 FPS performance modes, developers are reckless as of now. I don't know if it will change or not.

Problem starts with the whole dynamic 4K thing. Developers do not target for 4K 60 FPS, instead, they target 1300-1500p ranges for Series X and PS5 with performance modes. This directly hurts Series S, resolution wise. People say 1300-1500p look kinda okayish on 4k screen and they don't seem to care. But sadly, 700-900p can be blurry for some people (again, some people are content with that as well, so, no comments)

I, for one, tried lowering the resolution to 900p in Valhalla, and honestly: it looks hideous. 1080p itself is already a really low resolution for modern games, especially the ones that employs "temporal anti aliasing". This temporal anti aliasing already blurs the image quite a bit, games lose definition under the influence of this technique. It tackles the aliasing/shimmering issues, and cover a lot of renderig artifacts, and enable developers for adding more fidelity to games, but downside is, it really destroys the definition of image. It becomes a very soft image.

And one major way to tackle this "blurrines" is to throw a lot of resolution at it. I experienced this phenomenon in Valhalla, Red Dead Redemption 2(discovered the whole TAA thing in this game) and Metro Exodus. When you play at 1080p, you notice something is off, these games look like "lower" resolution. Once you up the resolution scale, like 1.25-1.5x or something, then game gains some definition, some details are back, and game looks a lot better.

So yeah, even the native 1080p resolution itself won't cut for some people. So imagine going even below that.

Long story short, I would say get the Series X if you really care image quality.
 
We really need "average" resolution numbers in certain games. I checked out AC Valhalla Series S gameplay and the majority of it looks like 720p-900p honestly. I can't call that "brief dip".

For example, Cyberpunk 2077 is limited to 1080p 30 fps on Series S, because a possible 60 FPS performance mode would mean it would drop below 720p and possibly hover around 540p. Even the Series X renders that game with an average of 1300-1440p (according to VG Tech, elanalistadebits and various other Youtube channels I've been following).

Series S does not only dip to 720p. It literally stays there in games such as Valhalla. You can call these games unoptimized all you want, but that won't change a fact.

One thing I can't say for certain is, some people report that it looks good. I can't comment on that...

My take is simple: if you're okay with 30 FPS, and you want native/1080p/1440p resolution, you can SAFELY get Series S. It won't DROP below 1080p at 30 FPS.

But at 60 FPS performance modes, developers are reckless as of now. I don't know if it will change or not.

Problem starts with the whole dynamic 4K thing. Developers do not target for 4K 60 FPS, instead, they target 1300-1500p ranges for Series X and PS5 with performance modes. This directly hurts Series S, resolution wise. People say 1300-1500p look kinda okayish on 4k screen and they don't seem to care. But sadly, 700-900p can be blurry for some people (again, some people are content with that as well, so, no comments)

I, for one, tried lowering the resolution to 900p in Valhalla, and honestly: it looks hideous. 1080p itself is already a really low resolution for modern games, especially the ones that employs "temporal anti aliasing". This temporal anti aliasing already blurs the image quite a bit, games lose definition under the influence of this technique. It tackles the aliasing/shimmering issues, and cover a lot of renderig artifacts, and enable developers for adding more fidelity to games, but downside is, it really destroys the definition of image. It becomes a very soft image.

And one major way to tackle this "blurrines" is to throw a lot of resolution at it. I experienced this phenomenon in Valhalla, Red Dead Redemption 2(discovered the whole TAA thing in this game) and Metro Exodus. When you play at 1080p, you notice something is off, these games look like "lower" resolution. Once you up the resolution scale, like 1.25-1.5x or something, then game gains some definition, some details are back, and game looks a lot better.

So yeah, even the native 1080p resolution itself won't cut for some people. So imagine going even below that.

Long story short, I would say get the Series X if you really care image quality.
Don't give a shit about the rest of your post but yeah where on God's green earth would you be able to get a Series X right now that's not over $1000

EDIT: Good post that but really only Series S is available to purchase right now at retail price.
 
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FrankWza

Member
'Attacked', your original post got quoted twice ... and you responded to one of those by deciding to escalate by calling him a transparent troll.. so exactly who is attacking who now?

Ironically, you seem to have done more to derail the thread than 'SonyGaf'.
Hahaha...that was me. I was just telling it how it is. How is saying how you feel or sharing an opinion transparent? He also called me pathetic and yet he called people who couldn’t afford an x and s consoles poor or some shit and meanwhile, op is describing a money pinch. Classy guy. I was gonna respond but he did a stealth edit.
 
No stock of Series X in my area. Only Series S available and has been like that since launch. Getting tired of my Pro's fucking whining. I tried playing Red Dead 2 last night and the fucking noise the things makes drives me up the wall (can hear it through my Steelseries headphones). I'm going to have to open the bastard and give it a clean....AGAIN.

I love PS but they dropped the fucking ball with the PS4 and PS4 Pro.
 
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Syff

Neo Member
I'd say yes go for it. I am enjoying my series S a lot with gamepass. Its fast and hell, the backlog is getting boosted to 60 fps in the future. :D
 

Riky

$MSFT
$300+$220
Like I stated you cannot run xss games off of a USB drive.

You can continue to be stubborn and I'll continue to repeat these facts.

That isn't a fact at all.

You can run Series games that still fall under the old Durango XDK from an external, such as Sea Of Thieves, Halo MCC and Ori among others.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
I would recommend the XSX over XSS super strongly... unless you were on a budget and then I would suggest to wait and still get the XSX. MS got burned with the Xbox One S All Digital Edition, but I think they got the wrong lesson: a digital only XSX would have been super good and soo sooo much better than the XSS (imagine a 512-1024 GB SSD Digital XSX for $349-399).

Even for 1080p TV’s you get higher quality picture (super sampled from 4K for games that support it), better textures, and better effects in games. Also you get the Xbox One X enhanced version of Xbox One titles.
 

Bramble

Member
No. The less people buying this, the bigger the chance MS might discontinue it and devs get clearance to only develop for X and PS5. Get a Series X. You get a disc drive, it's much more powerful and you get more storage. It's a better deal. Or get a PS5 DE. Also a much better deal.
 

S0ULZB0URNE

Member
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StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
As many of us have reco'ed just save up for an X.

Both systems are hard to find anyway, so just save up the extra $200, and by the time X's start showing up on shelves more later in the year, you'll have the money for X.
 

Azelover

Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it was. It really was.
I'm not even entertaining the thought right now. PC and Switch are already taking up so much of my time. It's not like in the old days, where I could have all the systems. And it's not even a money thing, it's a time thing.

That said, I'd probably wait for the X. For many reasons. I used to buy the systems early up until the Dreamcast. And then when it died in the market, I vowed that I wouldn't be an early adopter anymore.

So from PS2 on, I never bought another system early. If it doesn't have all the games I wanna play actually out and rated, I'm not buying the hardware.
 
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