The Xbox Series S — A PC Perspective
A little over a month ago I purchased an Xbox Series S for my partner’s birthday. After many years of PC gaming, here are my impressions of the first console I’ve ever owned.
The latest generation offerings by Sony and Microsoft are a significant leap forward, both in terms of graphics processing and storage technology. With each generation consoles have become more like PCs, with the most recent two generations even sharing the same CPU architecture as PCs. I became interested in computers and PC games fairly recently, building my first PC in 2017. I switched from Windows to Linux in 2018 due to a myriad of frustrations with Windows 10 and I haven’t looked back. I became interested in modern PC gaming in 2015 when I lent one of my housemates money for food. In return he bought me a copy of Skyrim with EB Games store credit. This is still my favourite game and by far the one I’ve played the most. Before this I’d played my father’s copies of Civilization II and Starship Titanic. The beating heart of my current system is an AMD Ryzen 5 1600 CPU paired with an AMD Radeon RX 5700XT GPU. I have a cheap 1080p 60Hz monitor with an expensive mechanical keyboard and Logitech wireless gaming mouse.
Unfortunately I no longer have the time to play video games anywhere near as much as I used to. By no means do I consider myself I serious gamer but it is still a pastime I greatly enjoy and I find expansive open-world games a great way to relax. At this point my total exposure to consoles was playing Gran Turismo and Crash Bandicoot on PlayStation 2 at a friend’s house as a child. Rather than investing in a home theatre/gaming PC I looked to the new consoles instead.
Availability
While not as badly affected, the Xbox Series S can still be difficult to find and is suffering from many of the supply chain constraints as the Series X and the PlayStation 5, caused by the global semiconductor shortage and effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, including higher demand. I ordered mine directly from Microsoft in late February and while I was limited to one, it arrived on my doorstep two days later.
Resolution
I have been studying full time for over 6 years, with income and a career being a lower priority. As a result there isn’t a single monitor or TV in our house with a resolution higher than 1080p or a refresh rate higher than 60hz. 4K 60hz gaming isn’t a priority for me, however it might be something I move to in the future. I haven’t evaluated the upscaling performance of the Series S.
The Bad
App Integration
The Xbox Series app mobile app integration is promising, particularly being able to download content, change settings and manage consoles from your phone. In reality it’s a mess. The Xbox and Game Pass apps are separate which superficially makes sense but the experience wouldn’t suffer if they were combined, also likely cutting down on development time for duplicate features. While having a remote control theoretically makes navigation easier than just using the Xbox controller, aside for the keyboard it isn’t particularly useful. In the search bar, I never want to search by people first, yet other users are always the first results. While you can download games from the app — even if you don’t own them yet, you can’t actually buy them. I’ve used the download feature on the Game Pass app a number of times and I really like it however you can’t see the progress of downloads. The entire experience is slow and disjointed. It seems Microsoft themselves have also reached this conclusion and even in the month we’ve owned the console the app experience has improved significantly.
Missing Settings
The remote control for our main TV was lost years ago and with it the ability to easily change the volume. Apps and games are at vastly different levels, with one being far too loud and the other being far too quiet. There is no way to easily normalise volume across apps and games. When downloading new games, there’s no option to keep the console on until downloads are complete, meaning by default the console will shut down in the middle of a download. The only way around this is to force the console to never turn off automatically, which I don’t always want. What this all may boil down to is not being used to the stripped down experience compared to using a PC.
Storage
Despite all the benefits of speed, the 512GB SSD is not big enough and we are constantly battling between trying new games and keeping our favourites available. The proprietary Storage Expansion Cards come uncomfortably close to what I paid for the entire console to begin with. While you can attach an external hard drive, titles optimised for the Xbox Series contents still have to be transferred to the internal SSD.
User Interface
Coming from a PC, the UI is by far the worst aspect of the Series S — even more so than the storage situation. It gets points for being snappy and making the most of controller inputs, but that’s really it. Playing your most recent games is straightforward enough and the Game Pass interface is a little puzzling at times but it’s mostly functional. However there is a dedicated section on the home screen just for accessing the Game Pass app, a complete waste of space for a single app launcher. The main settings menu is best accessed from the quick settings pane under Account, navigated to using the shoulder buttons. While this seems simple enough it wasn’t intuitive and I had to Google it. Otherwise the settings tile on the home screen seems to migrate around depending on the phase of the moon. While you have the option of pinning games and apps to the home screen, unpinned apps seem to disappear very quickly. For whatever reason, the Entertainment section of the home screen seems a bit pointless. There are a couple of store promotions and links to the app store but of the “Entertainment” apps I have installed, only Netflix appears in this panel. I’ve mentioned my frustration with the lack of some settings above, but for the most part they are logically laid out. Quick Resume is great but not being able to easily exit games is a terrible user experience, particularly when you are reminded that games are running in the background when downloading content. The option to exit is buried in the options menu — the console equivalent of a right click, and only appears when accessing the game from the home screen and not the library. While Steam Big Picture isn’t perfect, it’s a far better experience than on the Xbox Series and may well contain some valuable insight for Microsoft, particularly as modern consoles become increasingly like PCs.
The Good
I was interested in the Series S for a competent gaming and streaming experience in the living room for less than the cost of a PC and it absolutely nails this. It is extremely compact, to the point where we could conceivably take it with us when we travel. Design-wise it’s inoffensive and blends in well — something that can’t be said of the PlayStation 5. It’s quiet. I have to sit right next to it to hear anything when playing more graphics-intensive games and I’ve NEVER heard it when playing at a reasonable distance. This is in stark contrast to my PC and it’s 5700XT with a blower-style cooler. The app experience is generally good, with applications simple to install and with fast launch times.
Instant-on, coupled with Quick Resume means you can be playing or switching between games extremely quickly. This is enabled by the NVMe SSDs and new storage architecture present in the latest generation of consoles. This has by no means eliminated loading screens but in the games I tested I found them to be unobtrusive and usually only a few seconds on new releases. Another nice feature, although not unique to the Xbox Series is the console turning on when the controller is turned on and HDMI-CEC, enabling it to also turn on your TV.
Visuals
The graphics quality is fine. As expected, it handles YouTube and streaming services perfectly with the only issue being some artefacts when streaming high bitrate video through Microsoft Edge when no dedicated apps are available. This may simply be a quirk of using Edge or something on Floatplane’s end. In terms of browsing the web, I found the navigation clunky but usable. In games the frame rates are excellent and I never noticed any asset pop-in — (again, thanks to the SSD). In newer games I may have experienced some very occasional chug but it might just have been my perception. It may potentially be more noticeable at higher frame rates. I found the texture quality in games to be great with the exception of Doom Eternal. I was unable to compare this on PC but it seemed the textures were a little off. It may just be the art style and it is important to bear in mind that this game is highly optimised and tends to run well on even low-end systems.
The Controller
I absolutely love the controller. It’s not as advanced as the PlayStation 5’s new DualSense controller but it has replaceable batteries, it’s cheaper and if you already own an Xbox One controller it will work with games for the Series. Compared to the old Xbox 360 controller I use for sightseeing games it is an amazing upgrade. The textured finish on the bottom makes it easy to grip and feels great in hand. The triggers and shoulder buttons feel solid and the D-pad is an enormous improvement, although it can feel a little crunchy at times. The ABXY buttons and the thumb sticks feel almost exactly the same. Don’t fix what isn’t broken. I find myself using it as a fidget toy while watching TV.
My notes say:
“The share button, introduced with the Series was fun for about ten seconds but I don’t see myself using it going forward.”
Despite writing this, I used it extensively while working on this article and really enjoyed the convenience of having access to my captures on my phone while in-game. I have some concerns with the included controller for the Series S being white and exposing to the world my chocolate and Cheeto-dust encrusted shame. So far it hasn’t been an issue and overall the controller is a big win.
Game Pass
The real game changer for someone like me is Xbox Game Pass. Over the past six years, I have spent just over US$700 on games through Steam. You can see this for yourself. For that amount of money, I could have an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription for almost 4 years. This doesn’t take into account the cost of any new games I may want to add to my library later. For my money I have access to a rotating roster of over 100 games, including new releases plus access to another 60 games through EA Play, compared to the 72 much older games, expansions and bundles in my Steam library. There’s an argument to be made for actually owning titles compared to perpetually renting them and sure, games come and go but there’s a limit to how many you can play in a given amount of time. The value and convenience are difficult to deny.
If you’re looking for a living room gaming box ready in under a minute for couch co-op, sightseeing and video streaming for a great price. The Series S is hard to beat.
