The Latest on Lockhart by Brad Sams for Thurrott

Here’s a fun fact though, the original launch plans for Lockhart was that it was going to be released in Mid-October. That may not sound all that surprising, but Anaconda, the series X, was going to release in late August; clearly plans have been adjusted since the conception of the hardware.

Obviously, none of this can be confirmed now, since plans would have changed due to COVID-19, but what a wild world it would have been to launch the next-gen Xbox in August!

If there is a lower powered Xbox launching near the launch of the Series X, I have a hard time imagining the two launching apart now. Say the Series X releases in November and the Series S aims for January, keeping the originally planned two month gap. There could be a lot of people miffed that the cheaper box came out after the Holiday shopping season. I see this as a dual launch now.

Launch timing aside, while I personally wouldn’t buy the cheaper, fewer-featured box, I imagine that the mass consumer would just go for the cheaper box. Microsoft is looking to deliver a killing blow at the start of this generation. Sony has two boxes, but they have feature parity, minus a physical disc drive. Microsoft will have two new boxes, with different performance, plus continuing cross-generation support for the Xbox One. Halo Infinite could be playable on six different pieces of hardware; Xbox One, Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, and PC (what a naming nightmare). That has to be a testing and optimizing mountain to climb.

No surprise that those dates have slipped and the announcement timeline for Lockhart has been far more fluid than we have seen in previous years. That’s why it’s a bit hard to lock down the exact date but the announcement should be coming sooner, rather than later.

I don’t understand why they wouldn’t use June to reveal and educate consumers about Lockhart.

But the big unknown will be the pricing. If the consoles were only $50 difference, even though consumers are typically very price sensitive, the overhead of launching two consoles with that difference doesn’t make much sense. The minimum price difference needs to be $100 or more to create enough of a gap to make the additional marketing and the cost of educating the consumer worthwhile.

$100 is the minimum difference these two Xbox consoles need to have. If the Series X costs $500 then that could lead to a $400 Series S. If the PS5 comes in over $500, Microsoft will dominate the pricing discussion. If they can come in clutch with the launch line up and promising games, then Xbox will have solid footing for the generation to come.

Microsoft will close out June without a big Xbox 20/20 moment by Tom Phillips for Eurogamer

Microsoft has spent June recapping Xbox Series X details in a series of Xbox Wire blogs. The content has largely been about features we knew about already, such as game optimisation on Xbox Series X, Smart Delivery, and… a round-up of everything else announced so far. The month’s biggest Microsoft “moment” was, arguably, the surprise it was killing streaming service Mixer to work with Facebook Gaming instead. It’s fair to say that was not Microsoft’s intended next-gen marketing beat.

Seems like Microsoft’s plan for June was to simply repeat themselves. Sony regained goodwill with a strong games showcase for the PS5 and being directly associated with the Unreal Engine 5 reveal.

The original plan was to showcase the Xbox Series S as part of Xbox’s big E3 2020 show, so the proposition of a cheaper next-gen option could be explained properly, sat alongside the graphical powerhouse provided by the beefier Series X, both playing the same next-gen games.

But when E3 was cancelled and remote working hindered progress on various internal game projects, it became clear Microsoft could no longer show both its boxes and next-gen games all at the same time.

Understandable that a “Lockhart” announcement would get pushed back, in a general sense. Why not take the clearly repetitive month of June as an opportunity to reveal and explain the Xbox Series S? Especially in light of Sony having two SKUs for the PS5, something no one really expected. Strikes me as foolish to keep it in the wings.

The other looming question is price. Sony and Microsoft appear to be playing a game of chicken. Phil Spencer has openly talked about staying agile with Series X pricing. Sony appears to be ignoring the question. I feel like Microsoft desperately wants to undercut Sony. If this rumored Xbox Series S is much weaker than Series X and/or the PS5, but significantly cheaper, it’ll be a win for Microsoft. If Microsoft can make both their next-gen offerings cheaper than the PS5, it’ll be an opportunity for marketing domination.

Microsoft needs to come out swinging in July with games. Make the next Xbox more enticing than numbers on a spreadsheet and flashy features in a sizzle reel. The Halo teaser from last week zapped my pulse for Xbox hype back to life. There are rumors that Fable will make an appearance. What is The Initiative working on? I hope Microsoft answers these questions and teases more.