Topic: General Xbox Series X|S Thread

@TheLastKamikaze Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case yet haha. I've actually not played anything major on Series X since I got it on Monday. It's just not as appealing as I thought it would be. Granted, I did have an Xbox One so the Series X doesn't feel that different from the One.

I've bought Cyberpunk 2077 and Far Cry 6 so hopefully I can have some fun playing those games soon.

I admit as time has gone on, I've felt more regret from buying the Series X. It feels like my most played XB1 game will probably stop getting support in the near future (like Spring 2023), the 1st party library for Xbox mostly hasn't been particularly interesting in recent years, MCC is getting microtransactions and Switch is drowning in games (including getting several 3rd party games I had considered buying on Xbox like the Portal games, Nier Automata and Persona 5 Royal so I'll get them on Switch instead).

Hopefully Deathloop does release soon after the 1 year PS5 timed exclusivity is over, that's my most anticipated Series X game currently outside of FH5 DLC.

I do have to say that the Series X controller having a complete matte finish, even on the triggers now, makes it feel so much better to hold. I hated how glossy the original Xbox One controller was. They fixed it slightly with the V2 Xbox One controller but the triggers were still glossy. At least now every part of the controller has a matte finish, which is great.

Hey guys, it's my first time here on the Pure Xbox forums. Thing is, since the PS2 era I always had Sony consoles. Where I live really no one has an Xbox, but I'm thinking of buying one.
I don't have a current-gen console, just a PS3 and a PS4 (no PC), so I'm thinking of getting a Series S.
Why the Series S? Well, it's just cheaper.
In my country, a Series S is half the price of a PS5.
Would you guys say it's worth it? Are there any things to have in mind? I just want to have access to current-gen games when they stop releasing for PS4. I've been doing a little research on Gamepass and it's awesome. I would be able to play some old games I never had the chance like the Gears of War and Fable series.
Any tip/warning/anything for someone who never had an Xbox console?
Thanks in advance!

@Lup as someone that also lives in the land of PlayStation rule, I algo bought a Xbox for the first time (series X). The systems are great experience and gamepass is a great deal. Just bear in mind your disk space won't go a long way and the memory expansion is quite expensive (right now I opted for a 1Tb HDD where I put any game that is not series enhanced but I have both very close to full capacity)

@Lup The series S is a pretty awesome console. The only real downside to it, is its disk space, just like Balta said above me. Effectively it has like 265GB of space which you can freely use. That means you are limited to space. If you keep the installed games to a minimum and delete games when you're done you should be fine.

Gamepass for me personally is pretty amazing. But it is kinda depending on what you like to play if it is for you or not. Gamepass won't give you acces to the newest AAA games. The games that will be added will mostly be AA games and indies and here a there an AAA that is a bit older. IF you're fine with that? Then yes, gamepass is for you and you can get a lot of fun out of it.

The layout of the home screen will be totally different for you and might take a while getting used to. But you can change how things look on there, there is actually a lot you can mix around with in the Ux/ui department

The biggest thing you are going to enjoy on Xbox is the Quick resume feature. Just being able to leave a game open when closing the console or having multiple games open at once is such a huge deal. I never have to be afraid of forgetting to save before i turn off, since i start my xbox, i start the game and im right where i left off. Thats the bigges thing im missing when i play on my PS5 (i have both) haha.

@Balta666 @Lavalera

Thanks a lot for your answers!

Yeah the disk space doesn't sound even close to ideal, but I'm fine with that. I mean, I know I'm getting the less expensive console, some sacrifices have to be made.
I think Gamepass will be great for me because there's really a lot to choose from.
That Quick Resume thing it's pretty amazing. Sounds like something you can't live wlthout once you try it.
Something that's maybe a little silly: I feel like I'm never going to memorize the button layout for like quick-time events. I'm too used to Sony controllers!

@Lup yeah I had the same issue as I was playing a lot of Switch when I bought the system. From PS to Xbox at least the default accept button (A and cross) are in the same position

@Lup The Series S is a fantastic little system and offers superb 'bang for buck' gaming. Obviously you have a smaller GPU and less RAM as well as a bit less storage, also no Disc drive but for the price, you are still getting a LOT in that little box. Considering it comes with a Controller and HDMI 2.1 compatible HDMI cables in the box too, you are getting a lot in that little box.

If you have a 1080p display (or even a 1440p monitor), the Series S is perhaps a better fit than the Series X as the extra resolution won't make much (if any) noticeable difference. You also only get XB1S Back Compat versions (not XB1X) but with a HD screen, that's not too bad but you also won't get 60fps modes that XB1X versions have.

With Game Pass too, you have access to hundreds of games from the past 20+ yrs of Xbox gaming and access to brand new releases day and date every month. It might be a bit more like a 'Library' where you can 'borrow' games for as long as you remain a member and that Library has the title, but when it leaves, you do get the opportunity to purchase it permanently and with a 20% discount too. There is never any obligation to purchase 'anything'. The devs will get some money from just being on Game Pass, but to maximise their earnings, they have to convince you to purchase content.

Its a bit like a Mall where 'every' game is a separate store. The shop window may get you in the front door (of which there is no entry fee), but if you don't like what you see, feel etc inside that store, you won't spend money. If you enjoy being in that store, you are more likely to buy something and/or keep returning. All those stores/games are competing for your attention, no obligation to 'purchase' anything, and if if you enjoy the 'experience' in a store/game, you are more likely to return and spend time and money.

As others have said, there isn't much storage on a Series S (or X/PS5 for that matter) but you can buy expansion cards to run Series S versions of games, or you can add a USB storage (SSD/HDD) for Older games and/or 'storing' (not playing) Series games - they have to run from internal SSD or Expansion slot SSD. The expansion slot is a bit like those old 'memory' cards that can be swapped out quickly and easily so you could have multiple cards and just swap them out to play different games.

As for 'next-gen' games, the Series S will get the same multi-platform releases as the PS5 (and Series X of course) but obviously won't have the same Visual clarity so you shouldn't miss out.

I know @mousieone and I talked about this a while back, but has anyone noticed any problems specifically with some games, Quick Resume, and Remote Play?

At first I thought it was a general issue with Remote Play, but then I realized, the whole time I was playing AI Somnium, Quick Resume always worked on my XSS. Sometimes it would fail to start up right away, I'd go into "remote control this console" and try to start it a few times, and then after a minute or two it would start up and work fine. Then I went back to yakuza 0, And found once again that every other day or so I go to remote play, and it just won't start up. I go into remote control console and try to turn it on a few times, and it won't start up. Eventually I have to go physically turn the console on (light glows, for remote power on the light does not glow), and then it works. Though the quick resume session is usually lost and it starts from scratch again.

Somehow game-specific (or BC vs native XSXS?) quick resume issues prevent remote power up from working at all. Is it just me, or anyone else notice this? IDK how many people here use remote play so not many may notice.

@NEStalgia I don’t think Ai Somnium is native. But I don’t think Yakima 0 is 100% compatible with Quick Resume. I’ve noticed that a lot of games aren’t or they are only half/half. Tales compatibility with it got better over time for instance.

@mousieone Tales got better? I didn't remember them patching anything. I played in Feb or so and I remember every time it goes in quick resume the next speech comic book style cutscene that pops up would cause it to hardlock every time.

Yakuza 0 is definitely bad with QR, it crashes as often as it doesn't. But the big thing is how it seems to prevent remote startup from working at all. I thought remote play itself was just flaky on the consoles, but it seems like it's actually Yakuza 0 or games that fail QR prevent it from starting up, so if you leave the wrong game running, odds are remote play is down until you reboot or at least manually start the console.

@NEStalgia well when I was trying to use QR at launch it crashed the game so that’s better. Look I think it’s something the dev has to add by choice and Bandai like only did for SN and Taino. It works really well with Taiko. I have theories but anyway.

@mousieone I think MS needs to really do some major work on it. Maybe it can't work for everything but for games it doesn't work on, an X1/PS style suspend would be a better option. And having a QR unfriendly game really shouldn't be able to prevent remote control/remote play from turning on the console without waking up to it. QR is the best feature but the problems it can cause are nasty.

@NEStalgia for my part I never trust quick resume to work and only leave the game after saving. I use it as a good thing to have for quick access but never to remember my progress accurately as it is not reliable in general

@Balta666 It depends, on the game mostly. There are some it's absolutely solid, most it's not. But yeah, and that's sad, that's the main feature. Switch, you never have to worry about save points, it just suspends and almost never fails. X1 and PS4/5 with the power on suspend work fine, except if there's a power flicker so it's reasonably reliable. QR is the answer to all that, and they don't allow normal suspend, so it's sad that it so often fails. And a game like Yakuza 0 it's a royal pain not working, because that's a game you can go an hour or more between saves. If you just want to play for 20 minutes you simply can't. In a way, it's better on X1 where it really just suspends.

But QR being dodgy is one thing. Preventing remote play/power on is another. A bad QR shouldn't mess with system power states.

@NEStalgia It seems like you have a totally different experience with Quick Resume than i have. I think in the time i have my series S (since launch) i only encountered problems on 2 games (not counting the games where you have to reconnect to the online services) where it crashed after a while once i restarted it after a QR and that's it. And for over a year my Xbox was my only console i played on and had 4 game on QR most of the time.
The suspend function on Ps5 for instance isn't perfect either. Most of the time it works fine, but i also had several save desync issues between local and cloud after restarting a game (being the worst with Horizon Forbidden west, where i had to resync the save files and even rebuild my ps5 database once).
So yeah in my personal experience there isn't much difference in stability of the functions

@Lavalera It's definitely game dependent. I do have games that pretty much never falter. I think I just have terrible luck picking ones that don't behave well. For sure the worst 2 are Yakuza 0 and Tales of Arise. The former tends to just crash/lose the QR, but the remote play problem is more troublesome, and you absolutely can't rely on it for progress, it only works maybe 1/2-3/5 the time. And arise was a guaranteed hard lock after every QR once it hits a storyboard. I've definitley had a lot of other iffy QR experiences, but there are also a number that aren't iffy.

Yeah, you're right about save desync. I've had that happen with a few games on PS5 and never even considered it had to do with suspend (never once had that issue on PS4...) R&C and Kena both did that do me multiple times. I think they might be the only two games, but everything else I think was PS4 native BC games so that may not mean much. That's an annoying issue to resolve.

It's weird, I get QR not working since it's a new way of doing it, but PS5 suspend isn't doing anything PS4 didn't do, but I never had trouble with it on PS4.

@NEStalgia yeah it's especially annoying if it happens in games which don't auto save regurarly like Yakuza 0 indeed. To bad the crashes happen sometimes, in theory it's a genius function when it's working as intended. Let's hope for you future games you'll play have less issues, but I think with newer games we should have less problems since developers can now build around it

@Lavalera Definitely! It's still the best feature on XB, and it's why I opt to remote play on the XSS rather than cloud stream from GP, because QR. Which sounds great, except for when it doesn't work, or blocks remote play entirely when it fails