In a surprising announcement, Microsoft has announced that they’ll be discontinuing the Xbox One X and One S All-Digital Edition. The base Xbox One S will still be manufactured and sold globally. The report comes from The Verge, where a Microsoft spokesperson gave the following statement:
“As we ramp into the future with Xbox Series X, we’re taking the natural step of stopping production on Xbox One X and Xbox One S All-Digital Edition. Xbox One S will continue to be manufactured and sold globally.”
Considering Microsoft’s take on cross-gen compatibility in mind, the new family of Xbox consoles will look like this:
Xbox One S (base 1080p) < Xbox Series S (1080p/1440p with raytracing) < Xbox Series X (4K with raytracing).
This is quite an interesting move, seeing as how the Xbox One X was touted as the most powerful console in the world. We even compared it with an NVIDIA RTX 2060 Super, and the $500 console gave it stiff competition. The Xbox Series X, Microsoft’s flagship next-gen console, is going to take the crown from the One X in becoming the most powerful console (without PS5’s SSD taken into consideration). The Xbox One S All-Digital Edition was released in May 2019, although it was pretty early for all-digital consoles to be justified back then. The base Xbox One S has long been considered to be a weaker console than PS4, with the even older Xbox One (2013 launch) being discontinued in 2016.
This should make for a very diverse range of consoles in the lineup. Keep in mind we still haven’t had an official announcement regarding the Xbox Series S (Lockhart). We should know more about that in the next Xbox Games Showcase, due next week.
The Xbox Series X is targeting a Late 2020 release date, with Halo: Infinite a confirmed launch title.