Xbox One S review: striking new design, 4K and HDR are good though limited, but hard to recommend with the more powerful Project Scorpio coming in 2017
to the Xbox 360 John Callaham / Windows Central : PSA: Xbox Live is currently dealing with sign up and purchase issues [Update: It's back] Joel Hruska / ExtremeTech : Microsoft's Xbox One S: 4K Blu-ray, HDR, and a modest performance boost Sam Machkovech / Ars Technica UK : Xbox One S plays some older games at higher frame rates Tweets: Dana Wollman / @danawollman : After a good deal of hype, we mainly recommend the Xbox One S to folks upgrading from the Xbox 360, not the Xbox One http://www.engadget.com/... @eurogamer : Yes, Xbox One S is faster than the original. Digital Foundry profiles the GPU overclock. http://www.eurogamer.net/... http://twitter.com/... Chris Plante / @plante : Still not sure who the Xbox One S is for. I guess it's a nice bonus for late adopters who are impatient for Scorpio? http://www.theverge.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Xbox One S arrives at an awkward moment in Microsoft's own roadmap: Project Scorpio, a more powerful console promised for 2017, was already public when reviewers sat down with this one. Ars Technica's verdict — good design, limited 4K/HDR, hard to recommend to existing Xbox One owners — effectively splits the audience into 360 upgraders and everyone else who should wait.
The interesting wrinkle is Digital Foundry's finding that the One S plays some older games at higher frame rates via a modest GPU overclock, meaning even the 'stopgap' console quietly shifts baseline performance. That tension between a refreshed SKU and a looming flagship became the template Microsoft would repeat: Scorpio shipped as the Xbox One X, and the two-tier pattern carried straight into the Xbox Series X generation.
First-order effects
- Buyers face an explicit wait-or-buy decision: reviewers steer Xbox 360 holdouts toward the One S while telling current One owners to hold out for Project Scorpio in 2017.
- Microsoft is now selling three console performance tiers at once — original One, One S, and the coming Scorpio — with the One S's overclock meaning 'same games' no longer means 'same frame rates' across the lineup.
Second-order effects
- Game developers must target a widening spec range within a single generation, since Digital Foundry's profiling shows older titles already behave differently on the One S than the launch hardware.
- Retailers and Microsoft's own marketing have to position the One S around 4K Blu-ray and HDR media features rather than raw gaming value, because the gaming argument belongs to Scorpio.
Third-order effects
- If the One S-to-One X sequence holds, console generations stop being monolithic: mid-cycle premium refreshes become permanent, and buyers time purchases against announced roadmaps the way they do with phones.
- The two-tier structure visible here — a compact cheaper box beside a flagship — is exactly what Microsoft later formalized with the Series X and Series S split, making 2016's awkward review the first data point in that strategy.
The trend: Console hardware is shifting from single fixed generations to smartphone-style tiered lineups, where each cycle ships both a mainstream refresh and a premium flagship.