Xbox Series X Finally Gets a Price: Microsoft Reveals $499 Price Tag

By Michelle Ehrhardt
last updated

Microsoft beats Sony to a price reveal on its next-gen flagship.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

After months of waiting, Microsoft finally revealed the price for the Xbox Series X today via Twitter and blog post (opens in new tab). Let’s not beat around the bush -- the Xbox Series X is $499. That’s $200 more expensive than the Xbox Series S, which Microsoft revealed yesterday. It’s also the same as the Xbox One’s price at launch, and only $100 more expensive than the original Xbox 360’s launch price.
 

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For that $500, you’ll get a 12 Teraflop RDNA 2 GPU, a custom Zen 2 APU,  a 1TB NVMe SSD, and 16GB of GDDR6 memory. Microsoft’s aiming to push those specs towards 4K @ 60 fps gaming, 8K @ 60 fps gaming, 120 fps gaming and ray-tracing. It’s also developing the “Microsoft velocity architecture,” which will use the console’s SSD to allow users to suspend multiple games at once, on top of achieving faster load times.

Microsoft and Sony have been in what has seemed like a game of chicken for the past few months, with neither company wanting to be the first to drop a price. But Microsoft taking the initiative over its competitors isn’t necessarily new -- the Xbox 360 came out nearly a year before the PS3. Still, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a PS5 price drop soon.

$500 is certainly a hefty chunk of change, but seeing how much the Series X improves on the Xbox One, it’s impressive that you’ll be able to snag one for the same price. There will also be an installment plan available starting at $34.99 a month for 24 months, though be aware that this will eventually add up to $839.76.

As for the launch date, Xbox also announced in the price reveal that you can get your hands on an Xbox Series X (or Series S) starting on November 10th, giving us a solid date over the previous "November" promise. If that's not soon enough for you, pre-orders for the Xbox Series X/S begin on September 22nd.

Michelle Ehrhardt
Michelle Ehrhardt

Michelle Ehrhardt is an editor at Tom's Hardware. She's been following tech since her family got a Gateway running Windows 95, and is now on her third custom-built system. Her work has been published in publications like Paste, The Atlantic, and Kill Screen, just to name a few. She also holds a master's degree in game design from NYU.

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9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    I really want to know full specs on the Xbox Series S. I assume AMD/MS is using harvested chips with fewer CUs on the GPU ... but how many CUs are left enabled? Guess we'll know soon enough.
    Reply
  • nofanneeded
    This Xbox S is a direct threat to Nintendo switch at this price ..

    Nintendo will lower its switch price , and should act fast and release a new console . looking at Xbox S and the size of it, I think Nintendo will make a similar console maybe similar hardware as well.
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    I really want to know full specs on the Xbox Series S. I assume AMD/MS is using harvested chips with fewer CUs on the GPU ... but how many CUs are left enabled? Guess we'll know soon enough.
    The Series S was posited as a FHD console no? My guess is anywhere between 50%-66% of the CUs were left.

    nofanneeded said:
    This Xbox S is a direct threat to Nintendo switch at this price ..

    Nintendo will lower its switch price , and should act fast and release a new console . looking at Xbox S and the size of it, I think Nintendo will make a similar console maybe similar hardware as well.
    I don't think Nintendo has anything to worry about until one of the two giants tries a portable console. The Switch's biggest competitor really is the mobile space.

    People who are invested in Nintendo really don't care about the technical aspects of gaming.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    hotaru.hino said:
    The Series S was posited as a FHD console no? My guess is anywhere between 50%-66% of the CUs were left.
    TheVerge apparently got info saying 20 CUs. That's a massive drop from 52 CUs. It's for 1440p gaming supposedly, but I suspect 1080p might be a better fit. I mean, 20 CUs and 4 TFLOPS is actually a step down from the Xbox One X (though architecture may end up making it a bit faster still).
    Reply
  • hotaru.hino
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    TheVerge apparently got info saying 20 CUs. That's a massive drop from 52 CUs. It's for 1440p gaming supposedly, but I suspect 1080p might be a better fit. I mean, 20 CUs and 4 TFLOPS is actually a step down from the Xbox One X (though architecture may end up making it a bit faster still).
    That'd put it in line with the PS4 Pro, which at least keeps it in the spirit of "last gen's top tier for less"

    Though 1440p (or variable 1080p-1440p) with upscaling to 4K would make sense.
    Reply
  • timbozero
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    TheVerge apparently got info saying 20 CUs. That's a massive drop from 52 CUs. It's for 1440p gaming supposedly, but I suspect 1080p might be a better fit. I mean, 20 CUs and 4 TFLOPS is actually a step down from the Xbox One X (though architecture may end up making it a bit faster still).

    Whilst you’re premise is correct, don’t forget the 52CU Series X is 4K (approx 8 million pixels) and the Series S with its 20CU is 1440p (approx 4 million pixels).
    With just that simple fact the S would only need 26 CU to equal the X, and that’s doesn’t consider the exponential load increase as resolution rises for things like ray tracing and other shader effects.
    As the article said, better to compare it to the One S which has 1.4 or approx half the power of series s once you take higher resolution and new effects etc into account
    Reply
  • timbozero
    hotaru.hino said:
    That'd put it in line with the PS4 Pro, which at least keeps it in the spirit of "last gen's top tier for less"

    Though 1440p (or variable 1080p-1440p) with upscaling to 4K would make sense.

    Yeah it does which is concerning. Hopefully the cpu and new gpu features will be a ‘game changer’ is such a comparison
    Reply
  • gggplaya
    timbozero said:
    Whilst you’re premise is correct, don’t forget the 52CU Series X is 4K (approx 8 million pixels) and the Series S with its 20CU is 1440p (approx 4 million pixels).
    With just that simple fact the S would only need 26 CU to equal the X, and that’s doesn’t consider the exponential load increase as resolution rises for things like ray tracing and other shader effects.
    As the article said, better to compare it to the One S which has 1.4 or approx half the power of series s once you take higher resolution and new effects etc into account

    Have to keep in mind that the Xbox One X is based on much older GCN architecture. You can only directly compare teraflops in the same architecture. With different architectures, the frame rates will not scale the same with teraflops. The much newer NAVI architecture will get higher frame rates with less teraflops.

    Also on the xbox one x, the jaguar CPU was the bottleneck on that console. Most games could never live up to the full potential of the GPU. With Ryzen in the new consoles, we should see much much less cpu bottlenecks.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    timbozero said:
    Whilst your premise is correct, don’t forget the 52CU Series X is 4K (approx 8 million pixels) and the Series S with its 20CU is 1440p (approx 4 million pixels).
    With just that simple fact the S would only need 26 CU to equal the X, and that’s doesn’t consider the exponential load increase as resolution rises for things like ray tracing and other shader effects.
    As the article said, better to compare it to the One S which has 1.4 or approx half the power of series s once you take higher resolution and new effects etc into account
    I know from testing PC GPUs that going from 1440p to 4K (2.25X as many pixels) typically drops performance around 40% (provided you don't run out of VRAM). RTX 2080 Ti averages 122.6 fps at 1440p ultra and 164.5 fps at 1440p medium across eight games; it drops to 73.4 fps at 4K ultra and 98.0 fps at 4K medium. So that's 40.1% slower at ultra and 40.4% slower at medium. The 2080 Super (which is slightly more GPU bound) gets 143.7 fps at 1440p medium and 82.8 at 4K medium (42.4% slower), and 106.1 fps at 1440p ultra vs. 61.8 fps at 4K ultra (41.8% slower). Or if you prefer the reverse, 1440p runs 70-75% faster than 4K.

    That's keeping the GPU performance completely the same. But the problem is that the Xbox Series X/S isn't even remotely the same on the GPU front. Going from 52 CUs at 1.825 GHz (12.15 TFLOPS) to 20 CUs at 1.565 GHz (4 TFLOPS) is a massive drop. It's also 10GB of VRAM for the GPU with 560 GB/s bandwidth to 8GB of VRAM with 224 GB/s, and 6GB vs 2GB for the system.

    I think the Xbox Series S will still perform okay, but it looks much more like a 1080p 60 fps gaming system that will become outdated very quickly. Unless MS has game devs actually change other settings besides resolution? That could work, but I'm not sure console gamers will like it if they discover the $300 version not only can't run as fast, but also looks worse while running slower.

    Nvidia just announced GPUs with 20 to as much as 36 TFLOPS. Even if the real-world usable TFLOPS is more like 14 to 25 (and it is, relative to Turing), that's still a big difference. And a big difference in price, obviously, but the Xbox Series S isn't even going to match an RTX 2060. Maybe that's a better comparison of what I was hoping to see.

    RTX 2060 is a $300 GPU, RTX 2070 Super is a $500 GPU. The 2060 is 25-30% slower for that price drop, not potentially 66% slower.
    Reply