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

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.

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.

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 is a writer and video producer focusing on happenings in the video game industry. He has contributed stories to…
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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.
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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?
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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.
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