It’s a permanent fixture
Jordan wrote about a PlayStation 5 box art .jpg earlier today and included the sentiment “File this story under ‘Mildly interesting next-gen fluff for a Friday afternoon.'” At this rate, I might as well make that an official tag.
The Xbox Series X comes with a circular stand for vertical orientation. That, apparently, is permanently affixed. Microsoft has sent the console shell to a few outlets, and IGN’s Ryan McCaffrey has confirmed that the stand can’t be removed:
One of the most common questions I’ve gotten is if the round stand on the bottom of the Series X is removable, in the event you choose to lay it on its side.
I couldn’t find a way to take it off, and I just confirmed with Microsoft that it is indeed not removable. So just FYI!
— Ryan McCaffrey (@DMC_Ryan) September 10, 2020
That’s obviously not a problem if you plan to prop the Series X upright. However, if you’re more the horizontal type, this might set off some alarms. Now there’s a stand just jutting out the side of the console.
Fortunately, it’s not that unsightly. The Verge took a picture of this exact scenario:
As you can see, from a straight-ahead viewing angle, the stand doesn’t kill the form factor all that much. Sure, it looks less like a perfect black block. But at least it doesn’t stick out so far that your eyes are inevitably drawn straight to the stand.
If you’re a horizontaler who’s losing sleep over it, you could always just break it off. It’d be far down the list of my personal recommendations, but you do you, babe. You paid $500 for this thing, smash it to bits if you want.
