Sony Gamers Await Response To Microsoft's Xbox Series S Price Reveal

In response to leaks that made the rounds Monday, Microsoft has officially revealed the Xbox Series S, a cheaper, disc-less companion to the next-gen Xbox Series X.

First hinted at in August, the Series S will launch at the same time as its big brother for the relative bargain price of $299 and will be compatible with all the same games. Microsoft has also boasted that the system will be “the smallest Xbox ever.”

While Microsoft didn’t reveal much else about the upcoming systems, the acknowledgment of the leaked reports might give some weight to their other claims. According to one report from Engadget, both the Series X and Series S will launch on Nov. 10, with the Series X costing $499. Each version is speculated to be available with special financing payment plans, $35-a-month for the Series X or $25-a-month for its smaller sibling.

With mere months to go before the purported launch of the new consoles, gamers are baffled by the lack of price and official release date news for both the Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 5.

Taking to Twitter on Tuesday to vent their frustrations following Microsoft's announcement, users shared their assumptions that the companies are playing the waiting game, hoping the competition will reveal the price of its new console first, in order to avoid being undercut on price. As noted by Deadline, in 2013, Sony famously undercut the Xbox One’s price by $100 with the PS4, which went down as one of the many reasons highlighted as to why PlayStation crushed Xbox in sales.

Given that the PS5 will also feature a similar disc-less model at a cheaper price, fans of the rival brand are clamoring even more for Sony to reveal something, anything, about the price and release plans for its next-gen offerings.

Of course, several major cuts have been made to get the Series S’ price down to a budget-friendly level. In addition to lacking a disc-drive, the Series S will also be capped at 1440p for next-gen games, encouraging 4K-hungry fans to look elsewhere, but it will still be capable of 120 frames-per-second, reports The Verge. The system will also sport a much smaller 512-gigabyte SSD for storage compared to the 1-terabyte standard on the Series X.

Despite these cutbacks, the Series S is still expected to support a number of fancy next-gen tricks, including ray-tracing and ultra-low-latency inputs, giving thrifty gamers a suitable taste of Microsoft’s cutting-edge experience in a more economical form factor.

Unlike the Series S, the digital-only PS5 model is not expected to feature any compromises in terms of system specs. This has led some to suggest that Sony’s cheaper model could still be more expensive than Microsoft while still being viable to consumers.