What’s the biggest news from BIG? The Xbox Series S does exactly what Microsoft wanted

If you’re a regular visitor to this site, you know we care about Xbox Series S On this note: This console offers some of the most valuable features in gaming. With its low purchase price, combined with an inexpensive Game Pass subsystem, it offers the best value for money of any game. no doubt.

That seems to be the message to the audience. In a presentation on ID@Xbox at BIG, Latin America’s largest gaming festival, Leonardo Barros Barreto (Xbox Director and Partner Production Management) revealed that 48% of Xbox Series S players are new to the Xbox ecosystem.You can click to view related slides in the exhibition at the link.

In short, the Series S program is working: Its low price and ease of use are attracting a whole new class of players. BIG’s presentation showed that the largest percentage of new players entering the Xbox environment came from the United States, followed by Brazil and Mexico. We’ve also learned that there are currently more than 21 million Xbox consoles in the lineup (less than the 38 million PS5 confirmed by Sony).

But that doesn’t mean the Xbox Series S is all good news for Microsoft. Recently, Larian Studios came forward to say that it will not release Baldur’s Gate 3 to the Xbox ecosystem because the machine consumes less power than the Series X and PS5 generation stablemates. This is the first time a developer has publicly acknowledged that the lack of performance on the Series S has held back the game’s development. But I don’t think it will be the last.

“We had some technical issues developing the Xbox port that prevented us from announcing it with 100 percent confidence until we were sure we had the right solution,” Larian said. “Specifically, we couldn’t make the Split-screen co-op works to the same standard on Xbox Series X and S, and it was a requirement for our launch.”

But for Microsoft, the trade-off must be worth it: getting a flood of new players into the Xbox ecosystem with the Series S is no easy feat. Once those players are on board, it’s easier to convert them to paid subscription Game Pass members — an important part of Xbox’s current strategy (even if some publishers don’t seem too happy about it).

There’s still a raging debate about whether the Series S will hold back the current generation — and we’ve even seen arguments from both sides on this site. But whether or not the cheap but tenuous promise of the Series S is bad news for the industry as a whole, you can’t deny that it’s making waves for Microsoft.