The Xbox Series 32S makes less and less sense each day. Yes, it's an attempt to grab the mass market, but at what cost? They really should have gone for a digital XSX instead, unless the XSS surprises and gets snapped up by a bunch of people who really wanted to buy an Xbox, but somehow missed the opportunity with the X1, X1S, and X1X. If it's longevity will rely on streaming, then that has yet to be demonstrated. It really has shades of 32X disaster, when before it even launches, it gets gimped versions of the better SKU's games. Economies of scale don't work, as it's 2 different chipsets and different packaging too.
Was the XSS the original STB plan that MS had, before they repurposed their server core to create the XSX? It would explain both the utilitarian design of the XSX, as well as the issues with dev kits. They couldn't just redesign the XSS core, and if they were already planning on the XSX SOC for streaming servers, then it gave them a chipset that could handle next-gen visuals, without having to design a 3rd processor. The cost of an SOC designed for server blades might have restricted the budget in other areas like the SSD, or further customizations of newer AMD tech.
Just random spitballing, as I have no evidence to back this up. I've just found the sequence of events leading up to the XSX/S launch to be rather bizarre. 2 non-modular SKUs never made sense, the lack of footage from the hardware instantly looked like dev kit issues unrelated to COVID, talk of the XSX SOC being used in servers raises questions about what the original intention was, talk of MS wanting to transition to quite consoles in favor of GP, and MS' own garbled messaging over the past 6 months feels like patchwork cobbling of a strategy that hadn't yet been finalized. It feels like a rushed launch, which always suggests to me that something big had changed. You can say COVID, but Sony and their teams went through the same pandemic, but have been much-better prepared. What gives?
