Xbox Series S & Series X

You could spend a lot of time poring over the specs of the two new Xboxes, which Microsoft has been teasing for the better part of a year. The higher-grade Series X commands 12 teraflops of graphics-processing power and 16 GB of RAM, guts enough to push a 4K screen full of pixels at 60 frames per second. The more affordable Series S, meanwhile, designed to run HD graphics at up to 120 fps, sports the same 8-core 3.6 GHZ processor as its bigger brother.

But the real talking point is how you can buy them — and no, we’re not talking about the fact that the Series S runs $100 cheaper than the all-digital PS5, neither of which sports a physical disk drive. Because, you see, the up-front price war is a distraction. The real game-changing appeal of the new Xbox breed is the subscription.

Through what Microsoft is calling “Xbox All Access,” the $300 Series S and $500 Series X are available for $25 and $35 per month paid over two years, respectively, as a package that also includes 24 months of the incredible Game Pass Ultimate (Microsoft’s subscription service that includes a virtual library of on-demand games that is hundreds deep and will include bombshell next-gen releases like Halo Infinite on the first day they come out). At the end of two years, the boxes are yours to keep, and this is no rent-toown situation where you pay a premium in interest: Xbox All Access is actually slightly cheaper than buying the hardware upfront and subscribing to two years of Game Pass.

Of course, diehards might chafe at the notion of not actually owning games, which is absolutely fair. But this all-you-can-game subscription buffet isn’t aimed at the hardest core. By blunting the age-old up-front cost and appealing directly to dabblers, the new Xboxes are targeting a whole new demographic and bringing the highs of the next gen to a wider audience than anyone else is.

Specs

Optical Disk Drive: Series X only

Base Storage: 512GB (Series S), 1TB (Series X)

Xbox All Access Savings: $60 (Series S), $20 (Series X) $25+ per month