Microsoft head of Xbox Phil Spencer announced that Xbox Series X (the company’s most powerful console ever made) and Xbox Series S (next-generation performance in the company’s smallest console ever built at a more affordable price) are launching globally November 10 with pre-orders starting September 22. And Microsoft also confirmed the expansion of Xbox All Access to 12 countries, offering a next-generation Xbox and 24 months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate starting at $24.99 a month with no upfront costs. Plus EA Play is coming to Xbox Game Pass at no additional cost.
“Empowering you with freedom and choice is core to everything we do at Xbox. In addition to the traditional option of purchasing the new generation of Xbox Series X and S at $499 (Estimated Retail Price) and $299 (Estimated Retail Price) respectively, we’re expanding our Xbox All Access program to 12 countries this holiday, with more to come in 2021,” wrote Spencer in a blog post.
Xbox All Access provides an Xbox Series X or Series S along with 24 months of the full Xbox Game Pass Ultimate experience. And in total, that means you get access to a next-generation Xbox console of your choice; over 100 high-quality games to play on console, including next-gen Optimized games; over 100 high-quality games to play on PC; An EA Play membership to play more than 60 of EA’s biggest and best console and PC games; over 100 games to play from the cloud.
The Xbox Series S will be available starting from $24.99 a month for 24 months ($299 retail price) and Xbox Series X will be available starting from $34.99 a month for 24 months ($499 retail price). Game Pass for PC and the Xbox App will become generally available on September 17.
The Xbox Series S was designed around the same technology that will make these games and many others look and feel incredible. Spencer said that while speaking to game developers, Microsoft identified the areas that are most difficult to scale effectively, including the CPU and I/O, and made it easy to include Xbox Series S for developers who are targeting their experiences for Xbox Series X.
The Xbox Series S — which is powered by the Xbox Velocity Architecture — provides the same benefits from Xbox Series S such as faster load times and Quick Resume. And Xbox Series S also supports all the same next-gen features including HDMI 2.1, frame rates up to 120fps, DirectX Raytracing, and Variable Rate Shading. Plus it will also support Spatial Sound, including Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision via streaming media apps like Disney+, Vudu, and Netflix at launch. And Dolby Vision provides support for gaming, which will come first to our next-gen Xbox consoles in 2021.
The new Xbox consoles are also the only next-generation backward-compatible consoles that allow you to play thousands of games from four generations better than ever before.
