I would argue that the Steam Deck takes the best value crown. It’s $100 more expensive, but you get a much larger library, it’s portable with the option of connecting to an external display, compatible with many input devices including the Switch’s own controllers, multiplayer is free, voice chat is not garbage and if already has a Steam library, chances are that you already start with dozens of games available to play.
Plus if you are into emulation a big chunk of the whole gaming history is actually available as well. Including the current platforms like Switch to some degree.
That said the Xbox Series S is not terrible value either, you got access to newer games as well as the whole of the last generation Xbox library. The device also supports a plethora of older systems by means of emulation, has access to Game Pass and I can’t speak for all markets, but at least in mine you can find some pretty solid deals on the system that are around 20% off in some cases.
As for it being an issue for developers. Well, I can see it being a particular challenge to optimize, especially if they start with the PS5 as the leading platform. We can see the effect of that particular choice when a game runs much better on the Sony device than it does on the Series X, so you can imagine that if a developer fails to leverage the more powerful hardware it will also struggle to optimize for a weaker one.
But the reality is that the Series S is the cheapest entry point of the current gen and it’s not going to be phased out any time soon. So if a developer can’t make their game work on it, it’s probably best to just skip the platform as a whole. Yes, that will be a loss for the Xbox library and a potential revenue loss for the developer, however, the other option would also hurt the users and generate confusion on the market. So I don’t feel it would be a better route to go.
