A big announcement coming out of the Xbox Games Showcase 2024 is the introduction of three new hardware options for the Xbox Series family of consoles.
Two of the new models are for the Xbox Series X line, and there will one new option of the Xbox Series S. The new releases are being spun as Xbox’s way of offering “more choices than ever before.”
Hardware refresh
It may be hard to believe that the 9th-gen of consoles are already nearing a full four years on the market. As a result, it’s about high time for a traditional hardware refresh—which is exactly what Microsoft is doing here.
The primary change with these new models is storage space. On the Xbox Series X side, there’s the new Galaxy Black 2TB Special Edition. This model features a starry-night sky inspired paint scheme, with an Xbox-green trim along the underside of the controller and base of the system. This now has the largest storage size of all of the Xbox Series SKUs.
Rumours broke a few months ago of an all-white, all-digital Xbox Series X, and those rumours are now confirmed. The new model has the same Robot White colour scheme as its little brother, and the same limitation of sporting no disc tray.
Speaking of the Series S, it’s getting a bigger upgrade to its storage capacity, moving from 500GB to 1TB, just like the Series X has always had.
Microsoft has yet to reveal the exact release timing of these new models or their prices. That information is slated to be released “soon”.
It will be interesting to see how their release will affect the existing SKUs of Xbox Series X|S consoles. If you’ve been holding out on buying one thus far, then perhaps it might be wise to wait on pulling the trigger just a little longer as the “older” models may very well be sold at a discount to make way for the new stock.
Curiously, Sarah Bond, president of Xbox, also casually dropped during the presentation that Microsoft is in active development of the next-generation of Xbox hardware. It’s not that much of a surprise that Microsoft’s hardware teams are looking ahead, but mentioning it now is rather interesting. Nevertheless, for the time being, the road ahead seems comfortably long for the current-gen of Xbox systems.
