How is it any different than the number of games coming out that betray all the things they promised?
As a series S owner, I never expected this thing to be able to play modern AAA games for 7-10 years like previous gens. It’s delusional. It was $300 with a controller ffs lol
Yes we know. The comment at the top of this chain is talking about whether or not Microsoft could stop allowing that requirement and the potential blowback. Scroll to the top and start from the beginning you’ll see. 
As I said in another comment, I own a series S, and I think it’s pretty ridiculous of me to expect a $300 piece of hardware to be able to play the latest games past five years. Even with what they have said, I just kind of assumed it can’t be true. 
I imagine in two or three years I will switch to dev mode and boot retro arch on it. 
Some people can be pretty dogmatic about this stuff but yeah, I feel like it’s better than cash. Especially because the stuff I do for rewards gives them pretty useless data and I have all kinds of privacy stuff running in the background protecting my data
It’s also a rare example of where a massive budget without restrictions (relatively speaking) can lead to amazing results.
Usually one of two things happens: the publisher is tired of dumping money into a project then force it to market too early, or scope creep happens and the developers bite off way more than they can chew and there’s nothing they can do past a certain point.
Larian managed to dodge both of these bullets. Not by luck, of course. But they dodged them nonetheless.
At some point, it’s on you to know what your machine can and can’t handle. They put big letters on the front of each game telling you if it’s able to play on the series X and series S. It is right there lol. 
Also, with smart delivery, it would probably be trivial for Microsoft to have a modal pop up saying “this game is not optimized for series S and will not play, do you still want to purchase?”
No, the real issue here is developers (not their fault mind you). The moment Microsoft says “you don’t have to make it playable on the S,“ they simply won’t. Because why would you? 
It’s going great for me as the consumer with Game Pass. I have had over two years of essentially free games, because Microsoft rewards is too generous and easy to exploit. But I have no illusions about whether or not this consolidation is good for the industry. It simply isn’t. Yeah I guess y’all can call me out or whatever for using it anyway, but the series S with nearly free GamePass has just been too good for me as a dad with a full-time job and children. I’m still against the merger lol
I vote with my dollar where I can, but sorry, sometimes I make compromises just like anybody else. That being said, if I have to start actually paying for it, even at the current price, I’m out. So basically it depends on when they decide they don’t want rewards to stay around.
 I have a series S and even I think it’s unreasonable to expect full parity with a PS5/XSX after three or four years. It’s a $300 piece of hardware - it is remarkable what it does at its price point. It will be useful for a good 10 years, but it will not be able to keep up with new games after 5 at most in my opinion. It’ll be great for Indies or back catalogs.
They need to stop trying to make it functionally a series X and focus more on making it a gamepass/xcloud machine. As it is, it’s just an albatross around their neck.
Edit: Everything signaled that they were going to make it into a xcloud machine essentially. I’m not sure why they haven’t really pushed that harder.