New Xbox console to be released this year

A new console from Microsoft has been announced at the Xbox Games Showcase and it's scheduled to be released later on this year.

We were all prepared for a raft of game announcements and we got exactly that but Xbox boss Phil Spencer rounded out the showcase with the reveal of a new Xbox Series S.

Before you get any hopes up this isn't an announcement that will usher in a new generation of gaming consoles, it's more of an improvement over what's already there.

Xbox say they've 'heard your feedback' on the console front and are beefing up the storage space on the Series S with a 1TB SSD, bringing the digital only console in line with the likes of the Xbox Series X and the PS5.

The upcoming Xbox Series S Carbon Black showed off the new bit of hardware, declaring the console was 'back in black' with plenty more space to store your games.

That's rather been one of the bugbears of modern console gaming, that the games themselves are so honking massive that you keep having to juggle installing and uninstalling them depending on what you want to play.

Xbox

Long gone are the days when you could have a shelf load of discs which you could just pop in and play whenever you wanted.

Now you have to keep a beady eye on your remaining memory space to see whether you can play something or will have to clear out space.

It inevitably means waiting a few hours further down the line when you want to reinstall an older game, so more storage space is always welcome.

The Xbox Series S Carbon Black getting the 1TB upgrade is a welcome boost, particularly as it'll almost double the console's memory space from the 512GB the current Series S range has.

A slightly more affordable console packing 1TB worth of storage might give the Xbox brand the boost it needs to regain some ground in the console wars.

Xbox

The Carbon Black will go on sale in the US for the price of $349.99, understandably more expensive than the original Series S, which goes for $299.99 - though still some way cheaper than the $499 you'd need to buy an Xbox Series X.

For that extra $50 you're essentially buying double the memory space, though the Carbon Black will still fall short of the crème de la crème of the current generation of consoles.

Xbox boss Spencer admitted that they'd essentially lost the console wars with the Xbox One because that was the battle where people built up their library of digital games.

It's had a knock-on effect into subsequent generations, with the PS5 appearing to be well on top in the current struggle even as Xbox have shored up their position with the likes of the Series X and Series S.