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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The Xbox Series X will be missing the optical S/PDIF audio output that was present on the Xbox One and Xbox 360 hardware lines.
[...] The removal will mainly impact players who use a small subset of high-end gaming headsets and audio systems that rely on the optical audio connection instead of audio sent over HDMI or Microsoft's wireless standard. Some users will be able to use S/PDIF passthrough output from their TV-set as a replacement, though. And Windows Central reports that wireless headset makers like Astro are already working on solutions to make existing Xbox One-compatible S/PDIF products work on the Series X.
Microsoft has also confirmed that the Series X will be missing the IR extension port that was present on the back of the Xbox One and the IR blaster that was present on the Xbox One S. Those features were only really useful in extremely limited circumstances, such as for Xbox users who wanted to use the system's TV remote control functions without plugging in a Kinect sensor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 20 2020, @08:15PM
If you want a semi-serious answer to that question, because some of us got fed up with the ever changing hardware specs required to play games on them, it seemed like a hardware upgrade cycle was required every time another PC game developer decided to push the envelope with their latest release (looks at box containing all the graphics cards I've upgraded from over the past five years...and several sound cards), consoles, on the whole, just bloody worked.
This is only semi-serious, as I gave up up gaming in general about two years ago. I will admit to firing up the Xbox 360 to play the old Xbox game Black when I get really frustrated with a coding issue and need to 'work it through' by not thinking about it (an old, bad habit..which seems to work) but that's about it these days..