According to many critics, Microsoft’s just-released, beautifully slim Xbox One S rights many of the original Xbox One console’s wrongs – but, tragically, three years too late.
Noting that the original Xbox One’s “big, crazy dreams to take over your living room” were hamstrung by too loose a focus on what should have been its bread-and-butter – games – and hardware that “looked like a VCR from 1987”, The Verge’s Dieter Bohn remarks that the Xbox One S, by contrast, is “svelte and good-looking” – making for “a stupendous console”.
Along similar lines, CNET‘s Jeff Bakalar calls the Xbox One S “the console Microsoft should have delivered three years ago”. The added ability to play 4K video from streaming services particularly comes in for praise, the reviewer’s few grievances including the new, slightly redesigned controller, which suffers from “just enough of a change to make it feel cheaper.”
Gizmodo’s Alex Cranz, summing up the dilemma facing a lot of people who would consider the Xbox One S, points out the folly of “dropping $300 on an incremental update when a completely new machine is just around the corner”. This leaves the otherwise “great” Xbox One S with a smaller target customer base than it probably deserves.