Xbox Series S Price Tag Revealed

It wasn't that long ago that Xbox UK marketing lead Samuel Bateman told his Twitter audience that the long-awaited news regarding the Xbox Series X's price would be revealed "when they were ready." Now, thanks to a series of high-level leaks that have come from known Microsoft insider Brad Sams, they're "ready" to reveal the price of at least one of the next-gen consoles... and it's honestly quite shocking.

As you may know, Microsoft and Sony both have two versions of their next-gen consoles: a cheaper one that's exclusively digital, and a more traditional, more expensive one that can take disks and other media. And while we don't know how much the more traditionally expensive console will cost, we do know that Microsoft's smaller, cheaper alternative, the Xbox Series S, will cost just 299 bucks, which is about 200 dollars less than most predictions.

An actual price tag is good, and something we've been waiting for this entire time, but this reveal probably gave us more questions than answers. Specifically: $200 is a big difference. And while we know the Xbox Series S will lack the Xbox Series X's backwards compatibility and ability to consume physical media, I very much doubt those two features alone add up to $200 worth of hardware.

This leads me to believe a few things: either the Xbox Series S is dangerously low on memory, has noticeably weaker graphics, and has other hardware compromises that can accommodate this $200 price difference... or, less likely, the Xbox Series X won't be 500 bucks.

It's not likely, but it is possible, that the next-gen consoles will be cheaper than we initially anticipated, and that Microsoft will be trying to win the console war through price tags rather than exclusives. If that was the case... a 300 buck digital edition would make sense.

But we still don't know anything for sure. For now, we just have to wait for more details.