The Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S are the fourth generation of consoles in Microsoft's Xbox series, succeeding the previous generation's Xbox One. Released on November 10, 2020, the higher-end Series X and lower-end Series S are part of the ninth generation of video game consoles, which also includes Sony's PlayStation 5, released the same month.
Like the Xbox One, the consoles use an AMD 64-bit x86-64 CPU and GPU. Both models have solid-state drives to reduce loading times, support for hardware-accelerated ray-tracing and spatial audio, the ability to convert games to high-dynamic-range rendering using machine learning (Auto HDR), support for HDMI 2.1 variable refresh rate and low-latency modes, and updated controllers. Xbox Series X was designed to nominally render games in 2160p (4K resolution) at 60 frames per second (FPS). The lower-end, digital-only Xbox Series S, which has reduced specifications and does not include an optical drive, was designed to nominally render games in 1440p at 60 FPS, with support for 4K upscaling and ray tracing. Xbox Series X/S are backward-compatible with nearly all Xbox One-compatible games and accessories (including Xbox 360 and original Xbox games that were made backward-compatible with Xbox One); the newer hardware gives games better performance and visuals. At launch, Microsoft encouraged a "soft" transition between generations, similar to PC gaming, offering the "Smart Delivery" framework to allow publishers to provide upgraded versions of Xbox One titles with optimizations for Xbox Series X/S.
Critics praised the Xbox Series X/S for the hardware improvements over the Xbox One and Microsoft's emphasis on cross-generation releases, but believed that the games available at launch did not fully use the hardware capabilities. Xbox Series consoles are estimated to have sold over 35 million units worldwide as of February 2026.
History Industry rumors of new Xbox hardware had started as early as June 2018, with Microsoft's Phil Spencer confirming they were "deep into architecturing the next Xbox consoles" at that time. The hardware was believed to be a family of devices under the codename "Scarlett", including a low-cost version following a similar scheme as the Xbox One family of consoles, with major emphasis on game streaming and backward compatibility. By March 2019, further industry rumors had led to speculation of two consoles within the Scarlett family under codenames "Anaconda" and the low-cost "Lockhart" version.
Microsoft confirmed Project Scarlett at its E3 2019 press conference. Microsoft said they wanted a "soft" transition from Xbox One to Scarlett, with Scarlett supporting backward compatibility with all games and most hardware supported on the Xbox One. During a presentation at The Game Awards 2019, Microsoft officially revealed the design of Scarlett and its branding, "Xbox Series X", as well as a late 2020 release date. After the event, a Microsoft spokesperson said the Xbox Series X was a fourth generation of Xbox hardware, which would be branded simply "Xbox" with no subtitle.
Microsoft planned to detail the hardware specifications and launch games for the Series X at the 2020 Game Developers Conference (GDC) and E3 2020, but the events were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft scheduled online presentations over the same days in March 2020, while the company planned to reschedule its E3 presentation. Detailed specifications were presented by Microsoft, Digital Foundry, and Austin Evans of Overclock Media on March 16, 2020. Starting in May and running until launch, Microsoft planned to have more digital events around the Xbox Series X and its games as part of an "Xbox 20/20" series. This included an Xbox Games Showcase on July 23, 2020, featuring games principally from its first-party Xbox Game Studios.
On July 16, 2020, Microsoft announced that it had ended production of the Xbox One X and all-digital version of the Xbox One S in preparation for the new products.
The existence of the Xbox Series S had been guessed before E3 2019, based on a "Project Lockhart", a second, lower-end console that accompanied Scarlett. Confirmation of the Xbox Series S naming was affirmed through early Xbox hardware accessories that some had been able to purchase. Microsoft officially announced the Series S console on September 8, 2020, revealing that it would also be released alongside the Series X in November 2020. Microsoft pointed out that the Series S had been discreetly placed in the background of previous Xbox announcement videos featuring Phil Spencer during July 2020.
During Gamescom 2023, Spencer stated that Microsoft was unlikely to produce a mid-generation revision of either the Series X or Series S, as it would likely cause issues with specifications for games between the first such units and mid-generation ones. Instead, he said that "that when we do hardware, it should have a reason to exist that is demonstrably different than what came before", and that likely their next hardware would be for the future tenth generation of consoles.
In 2024, Microsoft announced new Xbox Series consoles: a 2TB Galaxy Black Special Edition Xbox Series X at US$599.99, a 1TB All-Digital Series X at $449.99 and a 1TB white Xbox Series S at $349.99. All were released on October 15.
As the effects of global tariffs and RAM shortage, the price of Xbox consoles kept increasing since 2025. In the US, the Xbox Series X increased from $499.99 to $649.99 and the Xbox Series S increased from $299.99 to $399.99. The 2TB Xbox Series X increased to $799.99, the 1TB All-Digital Series X increased to $599.99 and the 1TB white Xbox Series S increased to $449.99.
During the Xbox Games Showcase 2026, Microsoft announced the Xbox Series X25 Limited Edition and the Xbox Wireless Controller X25 Special Edition. The console and controller will be released in November.
On August 1, 2026, Microsoft raised Xbox Series X and Series S prices, with the increases proving steeper in Europe and the United Kingdom than in the United States. In EU, the 512 GB Xbox Series S rose to €499.99 and the 1 TB model to €599.99, while the digital-only Xbox Series X rose to €749.99 and the disc-equipped model to €799.99. The company attributed the increases to rising memory and storage component costs, driven in part by demand from the AI industry, and confirmed it was discontinuing the 2 TB Xbox Series X configuration.
Hardware When Microsoft's Xbox development team started work on the successor to the Xbox One consoles around 2016, they had already envisioned the need to have two console versions, similar to their Xbox One X and Xbox One S models, to meet the needs of different markets. By developing both units in concert, they would be able to make sure games developed would be able to be played on both systems without exception. As has been tradition with past Xbox projects, the consoles were given code names based on cities. The Xbox Series S was named Project Lockhart, based on the city of Lockhart, Texas, which Aaron Greenberg said was known as "the little city with the big heart".
For the high-end console, the Xbox Series X, Microsoft's primary goals were to at least double the graphical performance of the Xbox One X as measured by its floating point operations per second (FLOPS), and to increase CPU performance four-fold compared to Xbox One X while maintaining the same acoustic performance from the Xbox One consoles. As the engineers collected power requirements to meet these specifications, they saw these parts would draw a large amount of internal power (approximately 315 W) and would generate a significant amount of heat. This led to the decision to split the components onto two separate circuit boards; one would house the CPU/GPU, memory, and power regulators, and a second board would act as a Southbridge board for slower input/output (I/O) functions. The boards mounted on opposite sides of an aluminum chassis helped to create air channels for cooling. The remaining components—the heat sink, the electric shielding, the power supply, the optical drive, and the cooling fan—were then arranged in a Tetris-like fashion, according to principal designer Chris Kujawski, to achieve a compact form factor, resulting in the tower-like structure. To meet the acoustics factor, the system includes numerous sensors for controlling the speed of the fan, and the large open top was necessary to ensure good airflow through the system. While certain elements like the optical drive, air flow requirements, and heat sink size fixed certain dimensions in the overall form factor, they were satisfied they were able to end up with a square footprint for the unit.
Xbox Series X
Xbox head Phil Spencer said that Microsoft was prioritizing high frame rates and faster load times over higher resolutions; the Series X achieves this via the better-matched capabilities of the CPU and graphics processing unit. Compared to the Xbox One X, the CPU is about four times as powerful and the GPU is twice as powerful.
The Xbox Series X is powered by a custom 7 nm AMD SoC combining Zen 2 CPU and RDNA 2 GPU. The custom Zen 2 CPU with eight cores running at a nominal 3.8 GHz or, when simultaneous multithreading (SMT) is used, at 3.66 GHz. One CPU core is dedicated to the underlying operating system. The integrated GPU is also a custom unit based on AMD's RDNA 2 graphics architecture. It has a total of 56 compute units (CUs) with 3,584 cores, with 52 CUs and 3,328 cores enabled, and runs at a fixed 1.825 GHz. This unit is capable of 12.155 teraflops of computational power. The unit ships with 16 GB of GDDR6 SDRAM, with 10 GB running at 560 GB/s primarily to be used with the graphics system and the other 6 GB at 336 GB/s to be used for the other computing functions. After accounting for the system software, about 13.5 GB of memory is available for games and other applications, with the system software only drawing from the slower pool. The Xbox Series X is intended to render games at 4K resolution at 60 frames per second, and though advertised to support 8K resolution in the future through a firmware update, Microsoft has failed to fulfill this promise.
The Xbox Series X's console form is designed to be unobtrusive and minimalistic. It has a footprint, is high, and weighs . Designed to sit vertically, it can also be used on its side. Its front has the main power button and an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive. The top of the unit is a single powerful fan. Spencer said that the console is as quiet as the Xbox One X. The Series X includes an HDMI 2.1 output, the storage expansion slot, three USB 3.2 ports, and an Ethernet port. The console does not include an infrared blaster or HDMI pass-through like the Xbox One line, supporting HDMI-CEC instead. An earlier leak had suggested a TOSLINK port for digital audio, but this was eliminated in the final design. The console has an IR receiver in its controller pairing button next to the front USB port.
Xbox Series S