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I never did have an allegiance to a console. My temporary loyalties veered wildly depending on the games available and whether I could play with friends.
My first experience with video games was Flashback on my uncle’s Amiga – a keyboard with a built-in floppy drive that plugged into the television. I can almost hear the retro 8-bit soundtrack and the funny sound effects when I stop to picture myself as a child sitting cross-legged on the floor before the television screen, armed with a plastic filing tray full of floppy discs.
Before getting a console of my own – largely due to my parents thinking I was too young – I got my fix for this burgeoning interest during inconsistent sessions playing Tekken 2 on my mum’s friend’s son’s PlayStation, and a back-of-the-room view of Alien Trilogy one Christmas. I can remember sneaking into the bedroom, only to be told to leave by my uncles and cousins when they put two and two together. When I think about it, they weren’t very cool were they... And so, I was forced to navigate my own path into the video gaming world.
It began in earnest two years later with the PlayStation and Toca Touring Cars. Then it was the classic, a family PC, followed by the PlayStation 2, before the one that altered the paradigm.
When the Xbox 360 was launched during the festive period of 2005, it refined, redefined and reimagined video gaming. It presented new questions to gamers like, “are you HD ready?” and it ignited an obsession with gold-plated HDMI cables – one that exists today, albeit in another form – sparking the pedantic tendencies of the amateur technophile.
Remember when a television was a television, and a video game console was a piece of technology we plugged into said TV? Today, televisions have become a mockery of themselves. Their task is to display an image and their consumers, and their inventors, seem destined to desire a viewing experience befitting the personal requirements of a golden eagle.
I don’t know about you dear reader, but my eyes are beginning to degrade, so I’m not so sure I need much more evolution to take place in the visual space. Televisions are bloated with advanced technology; peripherals have become extensions of their players’ identity; and the market is awash with advice (no doubt informed and factual) on the quality of the components in a platinum-rated PSU – or power supply to those that haven’t previously debauched themselves on the never-ending forums of Reddit.
Customisation and personalisation are the order of the day for an ecosystem that must keep its player-base ‘at it’. I promise you; it never used to be like this. I can regale you with myths from a time when consoles never seemed to break, when the phrase ‘stick drift’ could have been idiom for tumbleweed.
I remember when a red PlayStation controller wasn’t essential: why would I want a red controller when my console is black? Added to that, the cost and the fact I just did not care. Now, my biggest concern is finding a controller that lasts longer than six months.
The Xbox 360 was the beginning of the universal hardware meme and pseudo-knowledgeable school chatter where none, bar the instruction manual, had previously existed: “if you open the disk tray five times and then hold the power button for 79 seconds, you can fix the red ring of death” – now we were troubleshooting.
Suddenly, and literally overnight, we were talking about the specifics: the gold-plated cables; the processor; the graphical fidelity. The console was becoming something else, dare I say it, a mini-PC. We were taking our first steps into the future, and then at least, the future seemed utopic.
The 360 was, and still is, the epitome of the generational leap and we haven’t seen anything like it since, have we.
So how can I compare the OG phenom to Xbox’s current weakest console offering? What the Xbox 360 did for sheer performance and technological advancement, the Series S does for accessibility and equality – two loaded words, never more relevant than today.
The Series S, if you didn’t know, costs a paltry £249.99. When I compare that with the price of a Series X or a PS5, it doesn’t sound legitimate. I won’t even bother mentioning the cost of a PC.
This makes the Series S the most cost-effective console ever. The PlayStation, my first console, would have cost my father an astounding £299, then. There’s nowhere near enough appreciation for this little rocket box of a console. It costs less than a Switch OLED, which contains underpowered tech and an expensive catalogue that never sees decent sales. The Switch, ironically, leans more towards the inaccessible.
A cursory glance at Steam’s player analytics will reveal that most gamers are still playing on 1080p screens. The percentage is around 60%. We’re frequently led to believe, and it would be easy to believe, that 4k is the norm, when that isn’t the case at all.
The reality is most people don’t use anywhere near half the potential of their devices. Crazy i7/i9 builds with 4k GPUs abound and there will undoubtedly be many users that have their ‘next-gen rigs’ hooked up to HD screens.
The Series S is compact, clean, minimal, personal and highly tuned to its use case. It’s innocent and mighty, but these generic adjectives don’t do it justice.
The top-of-the-line next generation consoles haven’t delivered anything groundbreaking. That said, in 2024, what would groundbreaking look like? And I must say, the PS5 is one of the ugliest consoles ever designed. It helps that it has a great roster of exclusives like God of War, Demon’s Souls, Returnal and Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, but many of their former exclusives are now available on PC, signalling a new approach for Sony.
The Series S doesn’t hide what it is. It’s affordable gaming for everyone. You might be a casual gamer, lacking time, a parent, a former gaming addict seeking to reconstruct your relationship with the medium, or even a hardcore gamer prioritising variety, or simply the affordability that the Series S offers (ideal for the student, or those without expendable income).
Paired with Game Pass, this is real progress. Game Pass pays for itself and whilst you won’t ever own the games you play, we have to accept that games are becoming less ownable. Why? Because the consistent quality of the past isn’t possible in a content saturated environment. We can moan all we like about the inevitable full digitisation of video games, but the future is already here.
At the end of the world, will we really need our plastic jewel cases and a console that won’t be able to siphon its power from the powerless sockets in our end-of-the-world homes.
Ownership, I get it, heightens a connection to a product; it allows us to own a commodity that retains some value. I own my dinky old car and if I didn’t, that car to me, would feel somewhat different. The same can apply to gaming. And yet the visual content we consume in the form of streaming services doesn’t concern us at all, despite those that would prefer a Blu-ray collection on their shelves. Gaming is entertainment, akin to any other content we consume. It isn’t better than a video on YouTube, or a film on Netflix.
The Xbox Series S performs a spectacular array of functions. It slots perfectly into the home of any gamer, plays some games at 4k and 1440p, it’s minimal and transportable, it’s affordable and therefore accessible, and gives players a choice of how to play, whether that be buying digital, Game Pass, or Xbox Cloud Gaming (which is currently in Beta).
On day one you can experience games like Indiana Jones, Stalker 2 and Avowed. There’s Microsoft Flight Sim (crazy that it’s playable on Series S) and other typical Xbox titles like Forza and Halo if you need to scratch an itch. With Game Pass you can search a catalogue, much like picking a new series on Amazon Prime, where you will find gems like Unravel.
The Series S is the ideal companion for anyone, regardless of whether they are an experienced gamer or not.
The Series S has unsurprisingly outsold its more powerful big brother the Series X, though their combined sales are nowhere near the PS5. This is the usual dig and it’s massively flawed. Another indicator that we need to stop believing and buying what we’re told to. No Xbox console other than the Xbox 360 has outsold any of the main PlayStation consoles from one through five.
The Xbox has always been the secondary console. The 360 bucked the trend and set the standard so high that Xbox monumentally screwed themselves and their brief ascendency – can you believe it, the 360 still didn’t outsell its competitor, the PS3 – with their ill-thought-out Xbox One.
You see, Xbox are where they are meant to be. Sony need only look towards the Series S for some late-gen inspiration. The Xbox Series S is the undercover agent of the gaming world, rarely spoken about as being an innovation. Its subtle existence is a juxtaposition of its mighty ancestor. Two characters in a novel: the King and the heir. We expect too much from them.