Xbox Series S console design and $299 price confirmed by Microsoft

Microsoft confirms its Xbox Series S without disc drive and 60 percent smaller than X. It'll cost $299, and it'll launch on November 10.

Xbox Series S white console (Source: Microsoft)
Xbox Series S white console (Source: Microsoft)

Microsoft has officially confirmed its next-gen Xbox Series S console and its $299 price tag. According to the company, the variant of the console will offer a similar performance than its bigger brother, Xbox Series X, in a significantly smaller form factor.

The company made the announcement on Twitter (via The Verge) alongside an image that reveals a white design and confirms the lack of a disc drive. As part of the design, the design also shows a black exhaust region on the side and another on the top, and the orientation of the logo on the front suggests that the console can be positioned vertically or horizontally.

Although the company didn’t share a lot of information, Twitter user WalkingCat tweeted a marketing video (before the official announcement) that confirmed some of the hardware and capabilities of the next-gen console. The video revealed that the Xbox Series S will be capable of 120fps gaming up to 1440p resolution, support for ray tracing, variable refresh rate, variable refresh shading, 4K upscaling for games, and 4K media streaming.

As for hardware, the Xbox Series S will be 60 percent smaller than the Xbox Series X since it does not include a disc drive, which means that all the games will need to be downloaded from the internet. It’ll also include a 512GB custom NVME SSD for internal storage, which it’s not a lot of space, but you might be able to connect an external storage device to accommodate more games.

There is no information about the rest of the internals, but they are expected to be a tweaked-down version of the Xbox Series X configuration with 7.5GB of usable memory and it’s expected to deliver up to four teraflops of graphics performance. In contrastthe Series X model features 13.5GB of usable memory and up to 12 teraflops of graphics performance.

Also, according to a report from Windows Central, the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X will both launch at the same time on November 10. The Xbox Series S will cost $299 ($249 in the UK), while the Xbox Series X is expected to cost $499.

About the author

Mauro Huculak is a Windows How-To Expert who started Pureinfotech in 2010 as an independent online publication. He has also been a Windows Central contributor for nearly a decade. Mauro has over 14 years of experience writing comprehensive guides and creating professional videos about Windows and software, including Android and Linux. Before becoming a technology writer, he was an IT administrator for seven years. In total, Mauro has over 20 years of combined experience in technology. Throughout his career, he achieved different professional certifications from Microsoft (MSCA), Cisco (CCNP), VMware (VCP), and CompTIA (A+ and Network+), and he has been recognized as a Microsoft MVP for many years. You can follow him on X (Twitter), YouTube, LinkedIn and About.me.