XBox

Xbox Series X, Series S and the generations before them:

the Series X is the full-size tower, black with a disc drive or white in the all-digital edition. The Series S is the small white box that never had a drive and renders below 4K, a difference that hardly shows on a Full HD television. Behind them sits the Xbox One family: the original with its external power brick, the slimmer One S and the One X, which the yearly EA Sports FC and Call of Duty releases kept reaching long after the Series consoles arrived. No Xbox takes a virtual reality headset, so for VR at home look at a PlayStation or the standalone headsets under virtual reality.

Game Pass or bought games, and where a Series S keeps them:

how you get your games decides the console more than raw power does. Someone who tries a lot of different games gets the most out of Game Pass, and for that a Series S or a digital Series X is all the machine needed. Someone who buys a few big releases and plays them for months is better served by a disc Series X, which also reads Xbox One discs and the older titles on Microsoft’s backward-compatible list. Storage is the catch on a Series S, whose internal drive fills quickly with current games. Games built for the Series consoles only run from that drive or from the official expansion card that slots into the back; an ordinary USB hard drive stores them but only plays Xbox One and 360 titles.

What a used Series S holds on to against a new one:

a new Series S sits around Q4,000 to Q4,500, well above where it started because Microsoft has put its console prices up more than once. That works in the seller’s favour: a used one in clean condition changes hands around Q2,500 to Q3,000, a smaller drop than consoles usually take, because the buyer’s new alternative has kept getting dearer. One that comes with an expansion card is worth noticeably more, since the card is the costly way to add space a Series game can run from.

Console bans, red rings and the modified Xbox 360:

Microsoft can ban a console as well as an account, and a console ban survives every factory reset. Before paying for a Series or a One, have the seller sign in and join an online match: a banned console cannot. A 360 with RGH or a chip, the kind that has circulated in Guatemala for years with copied games on its hard drive, plays those offline and nothing more, and its price should say so. Red lights around the power button of an early 360 are the red ring, the overheating fault the later slim models largely put behind them. On a Series X with a drive, listen as a disc loads: grinding, or a disc it refuses to read, points to the drive. An original Xbox One offered without its power brick is no use until one is found. On an Elite Series 2, press each bumper for a clean click and look at the rubber grips, which peel away with use.

Handing over an Xbox that is still your home console:

while a console is set as your home Xbox, anyone who plays on it can use your digital games and your Game Pass, so a buyer testing it sees a library that will leave with you. Say plainly what does go with it: disc or digital, how much storage, any expansion card and how many controllers. Someone coming in from Mazatenango or Jalapa will want to watch it go online and play a match, so put fresh AA batteries in the controller first; a standard Xbox pad runs on them, and a flat pair makes a good console look faulty. Once the buyer is satisfied, switch off the home setting, sign out of your Microsoft account and reset the console removing everything, there and then.