Microsoft Trademarks Xbox Series, Rumored Series S Looking More Likely - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 01 July 2020 / 2,848 Views
Microsoft on June 12 registered a new trademark for "Xbox Series" to the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The Xbox Series trademark is missing the X in Microsoft's next generation console, the Xbox Series X. The Xbox Series X already has its own trademark.
The trademark makes it seem more likely Microsoft has more than one next generation Xbox console in development. A more affordable next generation Xbox console, codenamed Lockhart, has been rumored for months.
Sony announced last week it will be releasing two PlayStation 5 consoles. The standard model includes an Ultra HD Blu-ray disc drive, while the Digital Edition will likely be cheaper and does not include a disc drive.
Microsoft plans to launch the Xbox Series X in Holiday 2020.
Thanks Generacion Xbox.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel dedicated to gaming Let's Plays and tutorials. You can contact the author at wdangelo@vgchartz.com or on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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Well that we woud have more consoes on the "series" was obvious, bur we still need confirmation that series S will release at launch of XSX being cheaper and weaker.
Gotta be Series 'E' right? Assuming XB1X get's discontinued. XB1-S, XBS-E, XBS-X.
I see what you did there.
My prediction is Lockheart is a full Streaming box like Stadia without the need of Hardware, that will off a massive price drop and competes with Google while pushing Azure.
As they say, Tifa Lockheart pairs well with Cloud.
I think M$ would be pretty smart to release a streaming focused dirt-cheap "Xbox Series TV" to compete with Roku and the like. Xbox already has slightly better app support than Amazon TV, and xCloud would be a pretty big selling point over the competition.
That said, nothing we've seen so far points to Lockheart being anything like that. It's probably just a 1080p-focused next gen console. I'm just hoping it's not digital only.
I don't see anybody complaining about "FLOPs" substantiating what they think is appropriate. AFAIK the entire point of this SKU is that the lower end is targetting 1080p, which isn't much of a loss for anybody's whose screen is only 1080p. With 1080p having substantially less (1/4) pixels to render, there is inherently that much less need for GPU horsepower. Even if you consider factors that don't scale down as well, it certainly doesn't need 1/2 the horsepower, and all the specific functions will be scaled to need.
I also don't see how this "holds back" games in general, other than requiring supporting a lesser resolution... Albeit most PC games certainly support 1080p resolution especially since it's rather common on laptops where many games are played these days. Minimum resolution just rarely has that much impact on gameplay, at least when discussing 1080p->4K where there is diminishing returns (as opposed to something like 480p->1080p). I would say some hyper-info-dense strategy games might be impacted by that (although diminishing returns hit them too, at least 900p->1080p would be more noticeable there), but for the types of games prevalent on console... not so much. Going to 4K can look NICER, but few games becomes impossible to display their fundamental interface information when limited to 1080p (whether by GPU limit, or by physical screen limit... which may be downscaled from 4K signal output). A game that absolutely requires 4K to display sufficient info density would be absurdly info-dense, and require sitting close enough to see every pixel, with that much more eye scanning required to constantly surveil all these pixels.
This is really similar to Switch reveal. If it's screen resolution is small, it doesn't need as much "FLOPs" to adequately render it, and too much would be overkill.
The problem is assuming that all games will target native 4k, not just now (considering most games look cross gen) but also later in the generation when new engines come out and people try graphically more ambitious titles. Ironically Microsofts first showcasing of Ray Traycing on Xbox Series X was 1080p. How does 1080p on Series X scale to Series S?
The most breathtaking showcase of next gen visuals so far has been the UE5 demo which ran at 1440p on PS5. How does a 1440p experience on Xbox Series X scale to Xbox Series S? Are people going to playing 720p quality games in a few years?
Thanks for the reply, some valid points and I think the broader discussion would have been alot more fruitful had such issues been raised explicitly rather than vague worry mongering. Realistically, there is plenty of graphic settings which can be dialed back, just look at any PC game, and I don't see any direct worry about achieving that. The issue is more that especially with anything specific like that, it is developer work to tweak those settings thru-out the game (not just globally but per-scene and on-screen effect) to achieve comparable gameplay... and doing so for what seems likely to be minority of the ~1/3 marketshare platform seems marginal pay-off for the costs. Either that eats into overall dev budget, and/or they do a crappier job (which be dialing back settings harsher than need be). Adding a premium model down the line is less problematic because if it's 100% leveraged then no real problem, but starting with a "lesser" SKU from the beginning does raise questions if it's worth it, even if it's possible.
I really hope Microsoft doesn’t do this. just be happy having the Xbox one x and maybe lower the price of that n try it phase out the S and focus on keeping the price down on the series x to really make people think about getting on board.
If Sony’s digital console is 449 n Microsoft come in at 400 or even 449 as well I think even some Sony gamers who don’t really care for the exclusive might go for the Xbox first this gen
I think it's just a matter of time when Microsoft will announce a next gen all digital console as an answer to Sony's digital edition. It should happen within the next weeks.
For me, I don't really care all that much about horsepower. If the difference in price is mainly going to be about the finer details like lighting and shading, I'd probably go cheaper.
Where did you get that impresssion? I got impression it was about 1080p resolution.
i doubt there is a series s. I thought it released already as the one s.
True, a 4Tflops next gen console sounds like a terrible idea and it will just hold back multiplatform games across all platforms. Here's hoping Lockhart is just a digital only version of Series X.
Essay Pro