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Xbox Series S $250 Black Friday price changed my tune on the console

Giovanni Colantonio
By

This year’s best Black Friday gaming deal caught me off guard. The Xbox Series S is $250 this weekend, making it one of the cheapest gaming systems on the market. It’s half the price of its big brother, the Xbox Series X, and is even cheaper than a Nintendo Switch. That $50 discount has me entirely changing my tune on a console that I was quick to write off when it launched two years ago. At that low price point, it becomes viable as a “travel console” just in time for holiday vacation season.

That’s a notable attitude shift for me, a noted skeptic of the device. When the Xbox Series S first launched in 2020, I couldn’t help but feel like it was a trap. Its $300 price point seemed appealing next to the $500 Xbox Series X, but I knew it would come with some pricey hidden fees due to its weak paltry internal storage. It just didn’t seem wise to pick one up in the long-term, so I largely ignored it.

Xbox Series S
Getty Images

A lot has changed about the gaming landscape in the two years since then, though. In particular, both cloud gaming and the Steam Deck have taught me how much I value portability when it comes to my gaming library. I’ve found that I love being able to take my entire PC collection with me on a week-long trip to visit my family, giving me something to do after my early-to-bed folks conk out by 9 p.m.

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So when I caught wind of that enticing Xbox Series S deal, I began to wonder if it could provide some utility that my Series X could not. With its small design, I realized I would be able to transport it with ease if I ever simply wanted to bring a Game Pass box with me when traveling. I decided to test that idea by bringing one with me during my annual Thanksgiving trip and, so far, it’s been a rousing success.

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When it comes to portability, the Series S does not disappoint. It perfectly fit into my usual travel backpack and its sleek design gave me a lot of flexibility when looking for a place to set it up at my parents’ place – a non-gaming household that has no need for entertainment centers. I easily found a spot for it on top of a cabinet and got it running on a guest room TV in minutes. It was smooth sailing from there, as I dug into new releases like Gungrave G.O.R.E. once my parents retired for the evening. I felt right at home, as if I was still in my own living room.

This is the kind of thing that I’d usually write off as a silly luxury that’s not worth the money. It’s up there with buying a second console dedicated to a PC streaming setup or to hook up to another TV in your home. However, $250 feels like the right price point for that kind of supplemental purpose. It allows Xbox owners and Game Pass users to further link into those ecosystems rather than build it around a single box, as consoles have traditionally worked. It’s a convenient price that Microsoft might want to consider sticking with permanently post-sale.

If you’re looking at the Xbox Series S’ $250 sale price and trying to mentally justify it right now, ask yourself if there are any specific utilities a more travel-friendly gaming console could fill for you. If that answer turns out to be yes, this might be the best time to test that theory.

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Giovanni Colantonio
Giovanni Colantonio
Section Editor, Gaming
Giovanni is a writer and video producer focusing on happenings in the video game industry. He has contributed stories to…
Baldur’s Gate 3 drops Series S splitscreen support to release on Xbox in 2023
Jaheira in Baldur's Gate 3.

Larian Studios promises to release Baldur's Gate 3 on Xbox Series X/S later this year after pushing the game back because of performance problems on Xbox Series S.
Baldur's Gate 3 is available now on PC and will come out for PS5 on September 6, but an Xbox Series X/S version won't be available for a little bit longer. In a July 2023 community update, developer Larian Studios explained that this is because it needed "to ensure that the game is performing without compromise across the entire Xbox X/S ecosystem, in multiplayer and with split-screen. The Xbox Series X version was running fine, but the Xbox Series S version of the game was struggling a lot more. The Xbox versions of Baldur's Gate 3 didn't have a release window until now, when Larian Studios co-founder Swen Vincke took to X to confirm it'd come to Xbox platforms before the end of the year. That said, it will exclude one notable feature.
"Super happy to confirm that after meeting [Phil Spencer] yesterday, we’ve found a solution that allows us to bring Baldur’s Gate 3 to Xbox players this year still, something we’ve been working towards for quite some time," Vincke wrote. "All improvements will be there, with split-screen coop on Series X. Series S will not feature split-screen co-op, but will also include cross-save progression between Steam and Xbox Series."
Thankfully, it looks like Xbox players won't have to wait too much longer to play this excellent game, but it will be one of the first games to notably drop a major feature between the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S versions. This follows comments by Head of Xbox Phil Spencer where he said he doesn't believe Microsoft will drop support for Xbox Series S in the foreseeable future. "I want to make sure games are available on both, that's our job as a platform holder and we're committed to that with our partners," Spencer told Eurogamer. "And I think we're gonna get there with Larian. So I'm not overly worried about that, but we've learned some stuff through it. Having an entry-level price point for console, sub-$300, is a good thing for the industry."
 
Baldur's Gate 3 is available now for PC, launches for PS5 on September 6, and will finally come out for Xbox Series X/S before the end of 2023.

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The Starfield Xbox Series X Console Cover.

Microsoft announced that official Xbox Series X Console Wraps will come out later this year. Three of these are already available to preorder, including one based on Bethesda Game Studios' highly anticipated Xbox console exclusive Starfield.
Following in the footsteps of customizable PlayStation 5 console covers, Microsoft is finally giving people more options to customize their normal Xbox Series X series. That comes in the form of Xbox Series X Console Wraps, which Microsoft says are "made with solid panels and an engirdled fabric," and are "designed to perfectly surround your Xbox Series X" without blocking the console's vents and airflow like some of the other current third-party options. The first Xbox Series X Console Wrap to release is based on Starfield and will come out on October 18.

Its design lines up with the special Starfield headset and controller and is based on the avionics modules players will encounter during the game. The Starfield Console Wrap will cost $50 when it launches in October, but two more Consoles Wraps launching a month later will come in slightly cheaper at $45.
Those two Console Wraps use soft microfiber fabric and feature designs based on camouflage, with the Mineral Camo Console Wrap using blues and purples and the Artic Camo Console Wrap featuring gray and white tones. Both Camo Console Wraps release on November 10, the three-year anniversary of the Xbox Series X launch.

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The impending Xbox 360 Store closure makes me wary of Game Pass’ future
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I'm an avid Xbox Game Pass user, often trying almost every game that comes to the service and closely following the games coming to and leaving the service each month. Following some recent announcements by Microsoft, though, I've been thinking a lot more about something else about Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft's current digital-focused Xbox storefronts and ecosystem: what happens when it all goes away?
Microsoft announced last week that it will shut down the Xbox 360 Store in July 2024. After that day, it will be impossible to buy games, movies, or TV shows digitally on the Xbox 360 store; it's just like what happened with the 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year. That announcement also came not long after Microsoft revealed it would replace Xbox Live Gold with Xbox Game Pass Core in September. With these changes, Microsoft is stamping out any support or focus its giving to the Xbox 360's era as a platform. As someone who grew up mostly playing Xbox 360, seeing these things I grew up with go away is saddening. It's also making me think about the day this will eventually happen to Xbox Game Pass or the store on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Frankly, I'm not as concerned that Microsoft is going to do it anytime soon. Microsoft has given no indication that it plans on abandoning Xbox Game Pass. It's a really successful subscription service heavily integrated into all of its current platforms, there are titles confirmed to launch day one on it into 2024 and beyond, and Xbox initiatives like Play Anywhere and Smart Delivery ensure that at least some version of most Xbox games are available on other platforms. While I expect it to be the primary part of Microsoft's gaming strategy over the next decade, as someone who mainly played Xbox 360 growing up and is now seeing its storefront and subscription service go away, I'm now thinking about what the end of the Game Pass era will look like.
These recent actions have indicated that Microsoft will eventually be willing to do the same to the storefronts and subscription service we're currently using. Even after the backlash PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox all faced from these announcements, Sony is the only one that has backtracked its plans to close down older digital storefronts, at least temporarily. Xbox Game Pass is the current hotness for Microsoft, but what happens come the day it isn't? A lot more games are digital-only or tied to a subscription this generation, and those are the games most at risk of being lost if a digital storefront shuts down.
What happens to the Xbox console versions of games like Pentiment or Immortality on Xbox once Xbox Game Pass and the current iteration of the Xbox Store are shuttered? Yes, they can be played on PC, but the Xbox console version will be lost forever. And right now, it doesn't seem like Microsoft has any publicly shared plans to permanently preserve those experiences, nor has it done so for all of the Xbox 360 digital games going away. Game preservation is a significant problem facing the game industry, and Microsoft has just made a move showing that it's on the wrong side of that effort. 

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