Think it depends on
A) The price
B) What's included
Will it be $299.99 with 12-months of Game Pass Ultimate? Then that's a striking value proposition. Of course it it's $399 (let's assume for this example that XSX is $499) and includes nothing, then yeah, of course it's a waste of time. Or maybe Series X and PS5 are $599 and S is $349, even without Gamepass. That's a huge amount of money to most people.
Also keep in mind Microsoft's installment plan, of which I forget to name of right now, but it's basically been confirmed to apply to next-gen as well. So you pay $30/month for Series X with GamePass, or you can pay $20 for Series S. Something like that.