Xbox Series S
I was big into Xbox since I was 18, given a bit of a wedge on my birthday to theoretically go on driving lessons. I instead was down the GAME in the corner of Clayton Square and picking up an Xbox, complete with Halo, Splinter Cell, LMA Manager, Jet Set Radio Future and Sega GT. I’d read that halo was good, but otherwise went in blind. Seemed like better value than a PS2 at the time. After marvelling at how fucking big the damned thing was and getting a bit of elbow strain carrying it home from Huyton train station, Halo absolutely blew me away.
A few short years later I’m well into my first year working for PlayStation, its the space year 2005 and I’m in the strange situation of paying attention to a system launch while actually working in the industry, felt a bit more real watching E3 coverage during the late shift. The confusion around customisable face plates, detachable 20GB hard drives and two versions of the console was real.
I’d actually stopped playing video games in my own time as much as I used to during my first year working as a games tester, and yet, I ended up accompanying my mate Cottee for a launch day 360 down the Asda, after 6 long hours waiting I had a shiny xbox 360 core, a copy of PGR, a memory card and a extra controller. Being a young adult with a job, no commitments I ended up getting *deep* into the xbox ecosystem. I have a significant amount of 360 games on my shelves to this day. And yet, with Xbox One I completely checked out, there was nothing about the system that appealed, and I was in position to see PS4 before launch, access to purchase one day 1 and knew that the system fully slapped. And thus I was fully back on PlayStation train.
So why, am I the owner of a fresh little Xbox Series S?
Errr, so I’ve not been able to buy a Series X… I really really want to get my hands on Flight Simulator and so I’ve basically rationalised myself into getting a S on ‘All Access’. This is the first machine I’ve bought as a specific ‘second’ machine, for it shall live next to my retro machines and semi retired PS4 pro. Which feels spectacularly bougie from my perspective, the machine will not sit alongside my PS Quintuple downstairs on the ‘good’ TV, for HDR and >1080p resolutions will not grace this machine.
So I feel like I’ve rationalised myself into a position where getting this thing *sort of* makes sense.
It’s small, and so fits on my desk without much drama
Its perfectly fine to run off a solid if unspectacular 1080p monitor
It’s cheap
Despite costing a couple hundred quid less than PS5 and Series X, still feels a solid, well built and a premium device
Games Pass Ultimate, seems like a pretty swell deal
I need to cut down on takeaways anyway right? This is costing me £20.99 a month, that’s a dominos I shouldn’t be eating right there.
Getting hold of a Series X seems impossible right now, and I am *not* paying a near 200 quid premium to buy one second hand off CEX or via eBay
Negatives?
Yeah, the hard drive is slim pickings for a Digital Only console - 300 odd GB is a hard sell out of the box. My countryside Internet is pretty slow by modern standards, so its gonna take me a full day to download Flight Sim plus the time required to download the optional data packs :(
I still intend to pick up a Series X at some point, for the fullest phat Flight Sim experience I can get on my nice TV downstairs, and when that happens I’ll be able to use Games pass that’s being paid for by this all access deal, and I want to enable developer mode in the future and use the S as a little dev kit when I’m messing around on Unity and also get some retro gaming on the go as its emulation performance seems well on point. I’ll do a post on that after I’ve set it up later this year.
All In all though, positive impressions so far. As a second device, if you can afford that action, seems like a good shout so far. But hey I am actively trying to justify the 20.99 a month agreement I’ve just signed myself up for for the next 24 months… so take the above as you will.
