I do think they should do what Sony is supposedly doing and release a digital Series X with an optional disc drive support upgrade thing, we already know they’ve been looking into that with previous patents or whatever
If that’s Sony’s plan and they are gonna sell them at $399, MS will have to either create a digital version to help with the costs or just take the hit and have the Series X at $399
A digital Series X makes sense anyway considering GP is the play and how high the digital ratio is, physical is on life support on xbox
Physical ain’t the hang up it was in 2013 and besides, it’s not like Sony is saying you can’t have physical, those who want it can still get the physical part separate if they still want that
It’s a very smart strategy tbh, price the console cheaper, lets those who want physical to still do so without kicking up a fuss and get more and more people into buying digital
and Xbox is already struggling hardware wise right now, a widespread $399 ps5 alongside Spiderman 2 will be rough for Xbox if they don’t also be aggressive
Wouldn’t be surprised if a 399$ SKU is coming with Spider-Man 2 to fight the release of Starfield to be honest. Sony probably is planning the release of spidey 2 just to try to take away MS’s chances of getting any momentum honestly.
A lot of people seem to think that it would help with fps, but looking how well some devs are able to bring a performance mode to their game, I think this becomes less of an issue this Gen as it was last Gen. sure, you could hold a higher dynamic resolution but considering people can’t even see the difference on resolution on PS5 vs Series X at this point I doubt they’ll notice with a Pro.
The jump to 8K won’t happen and ray tracing isn’t making that big of a splash and isn’t used by all devs, so it’s really hard to warrant a higher en SKU. Between 400$ and 500$ there isn’t enough room, so they’d most likely need to go 600$ or even above, which is almost unprecedented and would make anyone look bad. The fact they wanna separate the disc drive to charge less I think is somewhat proof that they don’t really have that much room for a lower price but are trying to increase sales at all cost and beat expectations.
If that’s the case, maybe they are trying to build that price disparity even more with a higher end super expensive model.
How many Tflops would we be talking here? Could they even double what they have for a reasonable price?
Wonder how come Sony seem to be able to afford it?
Really hate this because I feel like the Xbox is a much nicer design overall, much sexier and very smart the way they keep it this cool and silent, yet smaller and more powerful than the competition.
On the other hand Sony really pushed their chips hard in order to squeeze as much out of it and game engines since not fully transitioning over to next Gen seem to sometimes run better because of this. Sony’s design also makes it cheaper to produce and means they can reduce costs faster which is a big advantage if you can pass along those savings to customers and undercut your competition.
I feel like MS always tries to implement too much new technology ahead of time and be more future proof but it never ends up really showing up except in their own games, like what we’ve seen on Series X. We’ve also yet to see that AI upscaling tech they demoed with Forza Horizon as far as I know, something that could help push better graphical fidelity in their games.
Here is my theory. Sony sees blood in the water again and their goal is to steal the last advantage Xbox has, the power narrative, from them.
So they will put out a pro model whether it really makes any sense or not because in reality they are buying the Digital Foundry narrative in perpetuity going forward if MS doesn’t follow suit.
So concludes my theory. My theory that I just made up now while typing it.
They are manufacturing digital PS5 for 100$ less, so yes they are doing it. Which is why I wonder why MS isn’t doing that to compete better and then slightly lower the price of Series S. by bringing down the Series X 100$ without disc drive does slightly open up the possibility of a disc less Xbox Series X Pro for 600$ (ouch) on the high end. Without that I have a hard time seeing any pro console as even at 600$ it’s most likely too expensive for most.
These are the best theories. The “I made it the f up” sort of theories.
But it’s pretty much spot on. For example the One X might not have sold well (I bought one!) but it did allow Xbox to exist in digital foundry comparisons & the power narrative in a positive light. That’s after getting scorched with constant 900p versus 1080p Xbox One versus PS4 comparisons.
Releasing one year after the PS4 Pro gave Microsoft a power advantage which in the majority of cases resulted in better performance/higher resolution. And this is still relevant even now with games like Assassin’s Creed Odyssey having a higher resolution on Xbox Series X than the PS5 simply because the One X version was better than the PS4 Pro version. So that power difference between Pro versions definitely matters with backwards compatibility going forwards (for example if the PS5 Pro exists in a vacuum, then all multiplats released during that timeframe will have higher settings on the PlayStation version going forwards into next-gen as well).
I don’t know what Xbox will do though because they haven’t sold enough Series consoles yet & probably do not want to leave Series S console owners behind. But if Sony reduces the price of its base PS5 (especially the digital edition), then the Series S is in trouble anyway.
Loads of hot takes in here based on the words of a claimed infallible insider reminds me a lot of the tall tales of super powerful PS4 Pro and PS5 that were flying around bitd.
The series X hot chips presentation lays out the reasons pro consoles are pretty unlikely this time around so I have my doubts this is anything at all due to not being cost effective.
In the unlikely event they do push one out you can forget insane things like double GPU or memory upgrades and even then you’d still be in people can just get another job to afford it territory.
Personally? I’m good. Also considering a Series X already isn’t a cheap machine, nor did they lower they drop the price. Sony might do it, but I think they wouldn’t be as popular this time around as last. Most folks don’t have proper 4K sets (as really there is more to image quality than resolution, just because the resolution can go that high, doesn’t mean the image quality is better), let alone 8k.
I rather have Microsoft redesigning the Series S to a smaller footprint and remove the circle plateau on the bottom of the X (in favor of rubber feet, so it looks better horizontal).
The fact that I cannot see them adding a more powerful GPU with a big enough difference, along with more RAM on top, for what would be considered a reasonable console price, is why I am highly skeptics as well.
Wonder if we will get other to corroborate soon or if it’ll stick to that one source of information only. Because for sure others would have heard about it!
PS5 over time got more expensive, not cheaper. And i doubt they sell it with much of a profit right now, their last quarter had a operation margin of below 4 percent.
So a pro console would be expensive. I think this makes a bit of sense if it comes out in 2025 and stretches the generation to 2030.
But i’m still unsure about a unique selling point. PS4 Pro and One X could do 4k and this was easy to promote. What will it be this time? Not a lot of people will fork over 700 bucks for a bit better Raytracing.
Yep exactly there is no obvious marketing point for a mid gen refresh. Can’t use things like FPS or ray tracing as they are reliant on the individual devs. So they just wouldn’t have an easy selling point to use.
unless, there is improved ray tracing hardware even better than what is in amd’s latest graphics cards, the point of these pro consoles seems moot. i mean, you will get some better perfomance, but nothing groundbreaking.