Octopus Overlords

Just going to bare-bones it because I tend to ramble:

1. Boy wants an Xbox for Christmas, asked for one last year, but since he has a PS4 Pro (that he got maybe 2 years ago?), but refused on principle.
2. Was pretty much a hard no from me again for this year until the wife convinced me, seeing as he didn't ask for or apparently want anything else. Apparently all his friends at school are on Xbox, and he wants to game with and chat with them
3. I know NOTHIHNG about Xboxes. Never had one, we've always had a PS, and up until he started getting into gaming age, it was almost exclusively used as a streamer for the TV.

So after some research (almost exclusively Wirecutter), I went searching for an Xbox S. Why this model?
1. It's the only one I can actually find that is available
2. It's the only one that is available with Xbox All Access program which Wirecutter told me was a great deal (BS!).
3. I hate that the resolution is lower, but I am totally ok with all the other limiations compared with the X model If it's truly horrible for some reason, I figure it can be sold in a year or so, and hopefully supply chain issues will be better by then, resulting in more options, and lower (relative) prices.

If you don't know, Xbox All Access is the program where you buy the bundled hardware (S or X) along with a GamePass option. It's financed at 0% interest for 2 years, and even includes access for Xbox GamePass on PC (woot!)

The rub: contrary to what Wirecutter says, it's not a deal at all, unless you consider the financing part a boon vs a curse. I could recreate the whole package if the components were bought separately, for $60 less.

IF I could freaking find an Xbox S in stock anywhere. That's no small if of course, so All Access it is.

Any thoughts/comments/things I haven't thought about welcome of course.

Do you have gamepass or xbox live? If so, you may be able to get on a waiting list for an Xbox Series X. I did that and it didn't take long for them to allot me one. Which I then just purchased outright.

I'm kind of amazed that the newest consoles are still so supply constrained a year after their launch. We've been looking at PS5 - we have a long-in-the-tooth PS4 - but the limited supply has made it very easy to convince ourselves to wait. (Which in turn has helped us hold off on getting a new TV, so thanks for saving us money, Sony!)

AWS260 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 5:38 pm I'm kind of amazed that the newest consoles are still so supply constrained a year after their launch. We've been looking at PS5 - we have a long-in-the-tooth PS4 - but the limited supply has made it very easy to convince ourselves to wait. (Which in turn has helped us hold off on getting a new TV, so thanks for saving us money, Sony!)

It's the scalpers on the secondary market. They'll buy whatever is available to resell.

You could try the restock sites. Here's Tom's.

hepcat wrote: ↑Thu Nov 04, 2021 3:41 pm Do you have gamepass or xbox live? If so, you may be able to get on a waiting list for an Xbox Series X. I did that and it didn't take long for them to allot me one. Which I then just purchased outright.

I have had Gamepass for PC in the past (it’s literally one dollar right now for three months!)

Again, not sure I want to spend the extra $200 for the X considering the use case.

I think the biggest PITA in terms of differences between S and X us the onboard storage. Yeah, I know you can expand it, but now you’re close to X prices again.

From what I’ve seen the differences in resolution between the two aren’t that obvious.

I got an XBOX S this year, and have been very happy with it so far.

-The picture quality looks great, and for me the extra $ for higher resolution would have been a waste.
-The disc space is a little limited but I don't play that many different games at the same time so I just delete them when I finish. Hasn't been an issue.
-I don't have a back catalog of xbox games, so not having an optical drive isn't an issue.

Also, absolutely get Games Pass Ultimate. It's a good deal.

Got email from Microsoft yesterday and a 2nd one this morning. Both were offering XBOX bundles directly to Game Pass subscribers. So, I just bought an XBOX Series X directly from them. Woot!

I scored a PS5 yesterday from Walmart's noon restock for Walmart Plus subscribers. Tried on mobile and web, and got lucky with the mobile.

I really hadn't planned on fighting the shortages for one this Christmas, but my wife let slip that she was going to get me a 4K Blu-ray player. I told her to hold off as I was planning on getting a PS5 at some point next year when they came back into supply. She said, "Well if you can find one before Christmas go ahead and get that as your present." Challenge accepted.

She was a bit more amenable to having a second console for the family, as my son has completely taken over the Xbox and moved it into his room.

Referring back to my original post, I’ve been seeing a couple of deals on Xbox S’s the past week.

Ah well, I gambled and lost on this one. I felt pretty sure that available supply of Xboxes would get lower as we approached Christmas, not higher. Especially this year!

I hate overpaying, or even paying ‘retail’ as in this case (which is the same), so this chaps me a bit.

On the bright side, apparently you can trade in and upgrade to an X within this program during the 2 year period, so if the S proves to be too much of a step backward from the PS4 Pro, that’s always an option.

I started seeing inventory (of the S) literally TWO days after my return window had closed. And of course you can find much better deals for Gamepass Ultimate on an almost continual basis.

Carpet_pissr wrote:On the bright side, apparently you can trade in and upgrade to an X within this program during the 2 year period, so if the S proves to be too much of a step backward from the PS4 Pro, that’s always an option.

This is the interesting potential problem with the Series S. It's a solid option right now...a significant step up from the One, but also significantly behind the Series X in overall power. That doesn't seem to be a big issue right now, but the difference between Series S and X is almost guaranteed to become a bigger deal as developers seek to push the limits of the generation. The big question, in my mind, is how happy you are with buying a console that you know has a shorter lifespan. How long will it be before the Series S is struggling to provide the best experience on the latest games?

Of course console horsepower could be a moot point if you can get a good experience with Xbox Cloud gaming on a weaker system...

Gah, already running into storage issues. The FIRST game he wanted to install was some hunting game, and it took up almost half the storage! WTF.

Options include maybe a $90 5TB external drive just for storage and swapping, or the absurdly priced $200 dealio that you install as if it were the internal SSD. Have not tried cloud gaming, but from what I understand, there are only a handful of titles.

The deals I saw on the S and Game Pass Ultimate the past few weeks have made me almost physically nauseous. I pride myself on being a dealhound, and I guess when I whiff SO badly like in this case...it really irks me.

Any recommendations from the peanut gallery?

Cheapest: Attach an existing 2TB external drive for swapping (not sure how hard that is to do, but I read somewhere it's a bit of a pain?)
Cheap-ish: Buy a 5TB external drive for around $90
Not cheap at all: Plunk down for the $200 internal deal.
??? : No idea of cost involved to upgrade (is it an exchange?) to the X from within the Xbox All Access program

Also, I've read where you can only play older gen games from any externally attached drives, and you would have to transfer any newer gen games to the existing internall SSD. My question is how do you know which games are which? If I could see a catalog of games that are "current gen" vs "older gen" this would help with the decision I think.

Yes, you can play games not optimized for x/s from an external, non ssd hard drive. You’ll be missing quick resume and the faster load speeds, but otherwise it’s fine. You can tell what games are optimized for x/s as they’ll be labeled as such. See below image.



If you already have them installed, just go to installed games list and filter for games optimized for x/s.

Thanks -that is great news! Must be a (wrong) meme going around that you simply can't play the newer games, vs just losing some speed and functionality (which is to be expected, of course). That makes my choice a lot easier.

To be clear, games that do carry the x/s label DO need to be run from the internal storage, or the add on ssd drive. I may have not been clear enough on that. But games that don’t have the x/s label can be played from the ssd drives or from an external usb drive. They’ll load slower and not get the benefit of quick resume (I’ll have to double check the quick resume claim, but I believe that’s true).

Since most newer games will be designated x/s optimized, you’ll be playing fewer and fewer non x/s optimized games in the near future and beyond.

It is true that games made/optimized for the Series X/S can not be played from an external drive...but you can download and store them on an external. You can also play Xbox One or older games directly from an attached drive, but you will miss out on the gains in load time and Quick Resume. That said, playing previous-gen games from a fast USB-C drive is pretty much as good as playing them on their original console, so you can save the space on your internal storage for Series X/S games.

As previously mentioned, you can also download Series-optimized games to the internal storage while you're playing them, then transfer them to an external drive when you're done. They can easily be moved back and forth, and it will allow you to play them again at a later time without having to download them again, avoiding any data caps from your ISP and saving a lot of time.