Phil Spencer Thinks The Xbox Series S Will Outsell The Series X

I think Phil is right on the money. Early adopters and die-hard Xbox fans are going for the Series X.

Casuals just looking to play next-gen versions of [sports title], [competitive shooter], [YouTube streaming game of the season] are going to go for Series S.

Plus, there might be a bunch of people looking to use a Series S as a secondary console.

I think this is the first time i disagree with Phil.. People love physical media and they always want to have that option available to them.. I'm not buying that this is the last gen with physical media either

Certainly the current generation the base consoles continued to outsell the Pro and X but I'm not sure about a new generation as there's little to compare it to. It may well do as a secondary console but I feel they're banking on Gamepass to replace people's desire for physical media

He’s probably right, it’s the cheapest way to jump into ‘next gen’. The casual market might snap it up and with gamepass it’s a pretty good little machine.

I think Sony has gone the better route with a disc and digital version of the same console, the demand is there for true next gen consoles and it puts the S in a weird position I feel.

I think I made this same argument a while back.

I don't know which one will edge out the other, but the Switch has created a powerful argument about resolution and graphics as a whole. I think there will be a strong demand for both systems. I'm a hardcore gamer and I was stoked to get a Series S to go along with my PS5. I think right now with the Series X, you sorta know what you are getting. The S is still a bit mysterious. I'm sure once they get out in the wild and people really get hands on with one, a lot of people who wanted an X might reconsider an S.

A lot more casuals than hardcore gamers so it makes sense. Plus a great companion console for the price.

Isn't this obvious, most generations have proven that cheapest sells the best. PS4 outsold XB1, Wii outsold PS3 and 360, PS2 outsold GC and Xbox, PS1 outsold N64 and Dreamcast, etc. The list goes on, Wii U being a big exception against this.

I think by the end of this generation, the sales will go like:

Switch > Series S > PS5 digital edition > PS5 > Series X

@Kefka2589 do you think the S will take sales away from the X then? I think it’s an interesting question.

It’s really hard to predict how the series S will do. We’ve never seen a less powerful console launcher along side a more powerful counterpart before. So far we’ve seen a lot of promotion of the series X but no real advertising for the series S.

I would expect the series X to sell in the 20 to 40 million range whereas for series S would be in the 5 to 80 million. I don’t know whether it’s going to be viewed as basically the same but at a lower cost or inferior and to be avoided. It would depend on how it’s marketed and whether it works as intended.

I suspect the casual market won’t understand it and the series X will end up selling better. With most people buying online the won’t be the interaction with the shop worker who can explain a series S is basically the same but cheaper.

@Grumblevolcano I agree. People are drawn to the cheapest option, especially since it will play all the same games.

@Fenbops I think it's possible. I got a preorder for an X and S. I gave my cousin the X and kept the S for myself. Granted, I game a lot. A lot, a lot. I had the money for the X, but I opted for the S. So just basing off of my experience, I think it has a potential for a broad appeal. The S is just a charming device. I think aesthetically it's more attractive than the X or PS5. I think the PS5's massive size honestly has the potential to turn a lot of consumers off from it. It's bordering on obscene. So looking at it like a Switch. The masses seem to not care if a device can't do 4K. I'm sure the games will be just as fun as the X and the price tag is unbeatable. A lot of sentiments could change once these things make it into the wild. I think this S is a sleeping giant for now.

Gamestop is accepting xbox series s pre-orders with xbox all access right now. I just pre-ordered mine.

@Kingleo31 THANK YOU SO MUCH. I just got my buddy a Series S. You rock.

I have pre-ordered one of each, both for my house. I am strangely more excited about the S, I think due to being intrigued on how it will perform. That said if I could only buy one then it would be the X, I just want the best as my main experience.

@Kefka2589 aesthetically I think the X is the best looking of the lot but the S is compact and quite powerful for the money. I think a lot of PS5 owners could potentially pick up the S as a side console for a small amount of money instead of the more expensive X.

@Fenbops And that's fair. It's definitely a case to case basis. I think the average family will prefer the S in the sense that it'll blend in like an Apple TV. The X will def blend WAY better than the PS5 though. Lmao

This started as a companion to my PS5, but the more I see, this little dude might be my main man.

@Kefka2589 Happy to spread the news to my fellow Xbox gamers 😎

@Kingleo31 Did you ring up as All Access? Mine just took my card and sent me a confirmation. It shows a Series S and a 24 month Game Pass as preordered, but it's only $299.99? Ohhh Gamestop. You're so silly....

Edit: No lies. I will not be mad at all if a free 2 year sub to Game Pass showed up XD

I think it will be the series x now and in the future. Don’t forget overtime the price of the series x will reduce through reduced manufacturing costs and competition.
I think instead of series s they should have gone disc less series x for £350.
But I understand they needed to try something different to Sony and also have a console in the Switch price range.
Anyway time will tell and you can still preorder series s in the U.K. but it is getting harder to do so.

@Kefka2589 yep same as me. The 24 month gamepass is free i do believe. It's a really great deal i think, plus with it being the cheaper of the two consoles, I went with same day shipping so I'll have it on release day. It was an extra $18 but I can live with that.

@Bmartin001 Fortnite, FIFA, and COD fans don’t care about that though and they make up a ton of players.

Probably about right alongside the digital ps5. I think casuals and gamers looking to buy both will likely take those options.

I've gone for ps5 digital and series x because I'm a bit of a resolution snob... :s

@Dezzy70

Edit "Sony forget the inevitable" was supposed to read "don't forget the inevitable"
Don't forget the inevitable bundles for the s though. 299 sounds great. 249 or big bundles sells itself.

And the advertising for x for now is because the causal mass market isn't the launch customer at all. The s market won't wake up to new consoles until next year.

If the marketing is right end the s is just an x for. 1080p screens for users that want better looking games than a ps4 or switch but doesn't care about df stop motion breakdowns.....s will win by far.

Of course it will. It is one of the least expensive consoles on the market. That is the reason that the Wii went on to be a money printer.

@Kingleo31 I went ahead and ordered another. Same deal. Got 24 months of GamePass and the system at 299.99. So I guess another buddy of mine can have my preorder from Target. It's gonna be a good holiday boys and girls! Xboxs for all!

@Kefka2589 here here! 🍻

I’m not s sure. Digital-only consoles haven’t done great so far, and the only reason the One X and PS4 Pro didn’t sell so well was that they were mid-gen upgrades. But perhaps he’s right. I’m curious to see how it goes.

@AJDarkstar I'm an advocate for physical, but I think it's reaching the point of it's last leg. Physical media has never died in any real sense, its still alive and kicking. But I suspect this gen will truly see the rise of digital media as the dominant format. Especially if Xbox does manage to steal the show, or at least put up the fight its looking like they're going to. Imagine the sheer amount of games downloaded just via the Game Pass service alone. And if Phil is right and the S does beat out its larger brother. That customer base is locked into digital. So there are some huge opportunities for digital this time around.

@NEStalgia
Some good points, let’s wait and see
Will be interesting to see how it goes over the years. I think marketing and general gaming public perception will be two big factors.

@Kefka2589 it is slowly shifting that way, but I think MS see the One S as being the dominant console sales-wise, and they think this will transfer to Series S, when not everybody is necessarily interested in Game Pass. If, like me, you’re a multiplat gamer and Xbox isn’t your primary system, you may not see the value in paying for Game Pass (I don’t have a rolling sub; I did the £1 upgrade to my Gold membership then managed to use Game Pass quest rewards to get nearly 6 months more for free). Not only that, but many rely on the secondhand market, and perhaps swapping games with friends. So it’ll be interesting to see how well it does with those options taken away. I wonder if they’ll do a revised version with a disc drive down the line. For me, I have many OG, 360 & X1 games on disc that I want to play on Series X, which would be a bit of a dealbreaker if it didn’t have a disc drive.

@AJDarkstar I'm primarily a PS gamer. But I dont play much online, so I don't really need gold. so I'll just drop the $10 and fire up a month of GamePass when I want to use it. Like WoW. It was a lot more economical to just pay for it when I was actually using it even sans a multi month discount. I have a disc based PS5 coming because believe me, I know how that used market is. I'd literally rather have no PS5 than a digital PS5. Since PSNow isnt exactly famous for its excellence. I think most consumers really just don't have as much a preference as most of the folks here do. They just want the game and whatever is easy. Digital sales are like the drive thru window of gaming. Just instant gratification. No effort. No wait. I got my cousin a Series X and told him it can play physical discs and he couldn't even remember the last time he bought one. So I'm sure there will be a lot of those. They could buy a physical, they just wont. But I think your points are valid. I'm sure this conversation has been had in every board room around the globe by now. Lol

@Kefka2589 I imagine so! The thing is, most people likely have pretty slow broadband, so it’s not so instant for many. Plus, that 512GB storage will fill up pretty fast, but most probably don’t yet realise how expensive the expansion cards are. Those who want to play specific games but are too casual to be in the know will likely be annoyed at the lack of the games they really want to play. I totally agree with just buying a month when you want it - that’s what I do with Netflix & Disney+. I buy a mix of physical and digital personally, mostly disc on new releases, digital on cheaper sales games.

@AJDarkstar I'm really wondering about file sizes going forward. I know Miles Morales on PS5 is a tad smaller than the PS4 version. But where the Series S wont need 4K textures, the file sizes should in theory be a lot smaller than Series X games. So my guess right now is that these spaces won't fill up as fast we think. The PS4 and Xbone have murderously slow storage. So file sizes ballooned largely due to that. So we are trying to gauge a new tech experience by an old tech experience, and I just dont think that will really reflect what's in store for these new systems. And as far as the Game Pass selection, that's definitely a thing. I play a little bit of everything. So Game Pass has a ton I want. But there's also the aspect of how popular F2P games are these days. So I'm sure those will factor somewhere into the make or break of the S. And you basically buy the way I do. I never buy $60 games digital. Ever. I literally dont think I've ever done it one time aside from RDR2. I tend to scoop up the $5-$10 cheapies on the digital shops.

@Kefka2589 you’re definitely right about smaller file sizes due to the lack of need to duplicate assets and lower res textures on Series S, but with Game Pass I can see people downloading several games only to realise their SSD is filling up fast. Given the XS OS size (somewhere around 118GB), Series S will likely only have around 342GB free space.

@AJDarkstar We'll find out one way or another. These systems have dedicated hardware for decompression. So I think we're going to see file sizes crunched down in ways we never have before. These consoles are all guarenteed to have blazing fast SSD and I/Os. So there's no catering to the lowest common denominator here. Everything I've read from devs thus far has indicated that the super fast storage is their most requested upgrade since it will make their lives way more simple. But, we'll find out one way or another. I'm not too worried about it. Plus a 1TB external drive to shuffle games around is pretty cheap. So I'm sure I'll do that if need be.

@Kefka2589 I’ve ordered a 2TB SATA SSD for BC on SX, should arrive Monday. I won’t be installing as many games at once on the internal SSD, which was a bad habit I got into. I won’t get an expansion card until I need to, when hopefully the prices have dropped a bit and the storage capacity has increased. OG & 360 games should load fast enough from the 1TB HDD I’ve used on my X1S for a few years.
I recently got a 2TB external NVMe SSD for the PS5 for PS4 games too, which should do me nicely for a while, coupled with my old 4TB external HDD.

@AJDarkstar I've thought about going the external SSD route for BC. But I'll probably go cheap USB 3.0 HHD. I've got some Best Buy rewards that will nearly cover a decent 2TB. I figure that'll be faster than what's in my console right now anyway. I was thinking about just getting that 2TB and partitioning half of it in NTSF and half of it in exFAT. Figure that way I can have just one drive for both the PS5 and Series S, and a TB each should be more than enough for me. But I'll def get an expansion card once prices start going down. Probably have to get and SSD for the PS5 later too. I've already blown a small fortune. So fancy storage is just gonna have to wait for now. I'm fresh out of money... I might be out of food soon too. >_>

@Kefka2589 fortunately I’d got a fair bit saved, more than I thought I might have by now, so although the SSDs were expensive, I was able to afford them. I can understand though, even at Prime Day prices they were still pretty expensive.
Can you partition drives and share them? It’s not something I’ve ever looked into, but good stuff if you don’t mind moving it back and forth. Keep an eye out for Black Friday sales. 4TB & 5TB often offer the best value for price per TB, but some 2TB drives are decently priced.

Hard to predict really, time will tell.

@AJDarkstar I think it should be doable. The PS5 won't recognize NTSF at all I wouldnt think since they don't liecense to use it. So as far as its concered, there would just be a 1TB EXFAT space available. The Xbox supports NSTF and exFAT, so that's where questions begin to rise. But I'd imagine just label the partitions and it should be able to recognize the one you want and just avoid the exFAT partition. In theory it should work. So I'll find out. I'll probably just go for 2TB. I can basically get one for free at Best Buy. I'd get a bigger drive but it's probably just more space than I'd ever use. I don't mind redownloading stuff. Typically I'll tunnel vision a game until I have all the trophies/achievements then delete it and never touch it again lol

@Kefka2589 just did a quick search, and as I suspected either console will want to reformat the drive, deleting any partitions in the process. That was from 3 years ago, but I doubt it’s changed. You could still give it a try, but be aware that it may not work.
I’m used to having a total combined storage space of 6TB on PS4, but got into the habit of installing games for when I wanted to play them, then never got around to them. I expect my 2TB SSDs will semi-permanently contain games with online components like GTAV, fighting games, and racing games (pretty much just Forza and the Horizon sub-series on Xbox). With single player games, I’ll try to get better at installing, playing and deleting. We’ll see how that goes! It’s just a shame you can’t have a patch to reduce installs when putting them on SSD, to remove those unnecessarily repeated files.

@Kingleo31 Ughh. Gamestop just canceled that Series S I ordered for my buddy. Did you manage to hang onto yours or did they bamboozle you too?

@Kefka2589 yep. I got the alert that they wouldn't be able to fulfill my order due to high demand 🙄