Xbox Series S ready to take on PS5 Digital Edition in August

Microsoft unveiled the Xbox Series X at the Game Awards last year, and it's set to take on Sony's PS5 this November, in the holiday 2020 window. While we don't officially know the price of either console, we do know that Sony will be offering a PS5 Digital Edition that's reportedly $100 cheaper than the standard model.

Microsoft is rumoured to be following suit, and is arguably the first of the console manufacturers to establish this strategy with the Xbox One S this generation - a less expensive, digital-only alternative to the Xbox One, and the more powerful (and more expensive!) Xbox One X. 

Codenamed Project Lockhart, the Xbox Series S is allegedly going to be half the price of the Xbox Series X, potentially making it the cheapest next-gen offering in terms of the hardware on offer, and Microsoft is expected to finally reveal it in August.         

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With the cancellation of E3 2020, Microsoft's plans were scuppered; while Sony had no plans to attend the event, Microsoft was reportedly going to show off the Xbox Series S to the world at E3 in June. When it was called off, the brains in the marketing department came up with Xbox 20/20 instead, which was an alternative way to showcase games and hardware every month. 

It didn't get off to a particularly great start, with gamers voicing their disappointment, but June was going to change all that with the reveal of the digital-only console. However, that hasn't panned out as Microsoft would've liked - not wanting to be overshadowed by Sony's June event, the company is said to have pushed back the reveal to August (via Venturebeat). Xbox's Aaron Greenberg fired back at the rumours of a delay, tweeting:

"We have not pushed anything back, our plan remains to have our next digital show in July and teams are working hard on that."

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There seems to be some disagreement over whether or not the Xbox Series S was initially going to make its debut in June, but it's undoubtedly been a very quiet month for Microsoft. Perhaps the culmination of global events going on right now affected their plans, and this is its new schedule, or perhaps the plan always included a June lull. 

Whatever the reason, there's been enough going on this month that an uneventful few weeks in terms of Xbox news isn't a huge blow to Microsoft, and revisiting the reveal in a couple of month time, when we're closer to the holiday release window, seems like a good idea in our book. 

Source: Eurogamer