After releasing internationally in August 2016, listings on Amazon India  and Flipkart have finally confirmed that you can buy the Xbox One S in India officially. The Xbox One S India price is Rs. 29,990 for the 500GB version with a digital copy of Forza Horizon 3. There’s a 1TB Xbox One S version available for pre-order and priced at Rs. 31,999 (though Flipkart has it listed for Rs. 34,990). The Xbox One S India release date is October 10. Both listings are through Amazon India’s and Flipkart’s official merchant partners, Cloudtail and RetailNet respectively, lending credence to the fact these are official prices and dates.

And if you’re not interested in purchasing the Xbox One S online, there’s a good chance it will be available offline too. Multiple retailers speaking to Gadgets 360 have said that the pricing on both Flipkart and Amazon India are indeed accurate. Furthermore, they claim that Microsoft has been making the rounds to survey shelf space at stores and possibly put up demo units as well, though the company is yet to revert to our queries on the same.

Pre-ordering gets you Battlefield 1 and Gears of War 4 too. Much like Forza Horizon 3, these will be digital codes that would be emailed customers by October 19. The Xbox One S is a smaller, more power efficient version of the Xbox One that launched in November 2013 in the US and November 2014 in India.

The starting price of Rs. 29,990 is in sharp contrast to its price in the grey market, where the Xbox One S 500GB variant is for Rs. 18,000. Prior to the official launch, Flipkart and Amazon India had third-party sellers pricing the 1TB Xbox One S with a game for around Rs. 28,000 to Rs. 31,000 minus warranty. Its perplexing as to why Microsoft India has decided to launch the console over a year after it was out the world over. Granted you get it with two games, but considering that Gears of War 4 and Battlefield 1 are routinely discounted, it does little to sweeten the deal.

Nonetheless, the Xbox One S brings one feature the original Xbox One misses, HDR – what this means is, improved image quality and colour reproduction on games and TV sets that support it. Though keep in mind that the Xbox One S ditches the Kinect port of the original and lacks an external power brick that’s now integrated into the Xbox One S. And while Microsoft doesn’t advertise it, we’ve noticed a small, yet perceptible bump in performance in games such as Forza Horizon 3 and Gears of War 4, with frame rates being more consistent on the Xbox One S.

In our Xbox One S review from last year, we noted how it was a remarkable improvement over the Xbox One’s 2013 debut. So much so that if you had to buy an Xbox One, this was the only version worth considering.

Xbox One X India release date?

However, with the Xbox One X available internationally from November 7, it will be interesting to see if this still is the case. Though don’t expect it in India anytime soon. It seems that Microsoft has no plans to launch the Xbox One X here just yet.

“Similar to other products sold around the world, ship dates and product availability vary by market. We’ll certainly be in touch when we have any local launch news to share,” the company told Gadgets 360 via email.