This year's Xbox Games Showcase event featured a number of game announcements but relatively few surprises. One welcome surprise, however, came right at the end of the event. Phil Spencer announced a new version of Microsoft's popular Xbox Series S console that will come in black and feature a 1TB SSD. That's a lot more storage for only $50 more than the regular Series S!
The original Xbox Series S was released as an affordable alternative to the more powerful Xbox Series X. Whereas the Series X sells for $500, the white Series S sells for $299. The Series S is less powerful, of course, but that's a fair tradeoff for the much lower price tag. Still, the Series S has long been saddled with a meager 500 GB SSD, a paltry amount of storage for today's increasingly large games. If you wanted to play more than just a few games at a time, you basically had to buy an overpriced memory card to increase the console's storage capacity.
The new Xbox Series S Carbon Black won't be more powerful than the white model, but it will have double the storage. Even 1 TB isn't a tremendous volume of storage nowadays, but it's a lot better than 500 GB. I had been hoping for a 2TB Series X console to be revealed, but no such luck this year.
The Xbox Series S Carbon Black 1TB Console will launch on September 1 for $349.99.