Xbox Series X isn’t exciting enough right now
It towers robustly next to your TV cabinet, because the new console from Microsoft looks more like a computer case than a device for gaming. Actually, the appearance of Xbox Series X fits well with its interior. It is quite a powerhouse. Unfortunately, the device doesn’t really have the ultimate game to show that right now.
Where Nintendo often comes up with completely new ways of gaming, or at least a funny design choice and other innovations, at Sony and Microsoft it is usually about gaming better and more beautiful. That’s why Xbox Series X also features ray tracing capabilities, making incident light seem more real than ever before. Ray tracing is probably the main showpiece of the system, together with its great computing power, which means that you don’t see loading screens as often. Thanks to the Quick Resume option, you can resume your game in no time, right where you left off.
Something has been tweaked to the controller, but that difference is not very big with the controller of the predecessor Xbox One. Wherever the console goes back to the past, that is in backwards compatibility. You can play games from all generations of Xbox, which is really cool. Especially if you use Xbox Game Pass, you can easily start all kinds of games from the history of Microsoft’s successful game console line.
The specifications
Just a memory refresh of the specifications of this console? The CPU has 8x Cores at 3.6 GHz, the GPU is 12 teraflops with 52 CUs at 1.825 GHz. The memory is 16 GB GDDR6 and the memory bandwidth is 10 GB at 560 GB / s with 6 GB at 226 GB / s. The internal storage is 1TB and you can expand this with another 1TB.
The computing power of Xbox Series X is reflected in its visual capabilities. It can show 4K / 60fps gameplay (with 4K / 120Hz support). In addition, there is support for Dolby Vision and Atmos. It is all beautiful, but of course you have to have a television that can also show all that pomp. If you do not have that, the purchase of an Xbox Series X is quite pricey: you will easily spend 1500-2000 euros on a good television with the matching game console.
I wouldn’t do it now. The reason I currently discourage Xbox Series X is that there simply aren’t enough games to really show what the console can do. It is painful to say that, because it is also a beautiful thing that works very smoothly, but at the moment it is actually too heavy for his job. Hopefully Halo, the launch game that has been delayed to 2021, will change that. I have a good time with Xbox Game Pass, not of that, but I might as well have done that on Xbox One.
A heavier Xbox One
What is also unfortunate, that the interface has not undergone major changes. Of course: if a menu works well, then you should not necessarily change it completely. On the other hand, the console doesn’t feel very much like a new system. It feels like you have a kind of heavier Xbox One, so unfortunately you can’t show a lot. If you want to show your friends how great the console is on PlayStation 5, just fire up Astroboy. He can show how those adaptive triggers work and so on. Xbox Series X lacks such a game, a kind of demo with which you can realize that you have a brand new system full of new possibilities.
The hardware is really good. The device is extremely quiet and can compete with high-end PCs. It may be a hefty purchase, but you can’t find a game PC with the same specifications for such a low price. It is very easy to get used to the disappearance – or at least considerably less – of the loading times, but it is and remains special how big that change is. Even if you play big games: you notice that Xbox Series X does not turn its back on it.
Black baking beast
If you were wondering how big the black baking animal is: it is about 15 x 15 x 30 cm. It weighs about 4.5 kilograms and in addition to being able to place it vertically, it can also be used horizontally. Vertical is just a bit nicer: it is not without reason that Microsoft allows it to stand upright in all marketing. The greenish air holes on the top are a nice addition to the otherwise drab black cube design Xbox X Series .
If you would like to have a new Xbox at home, you will have a lot of fun with Xbox Series X. It is a beautiful thing, it has power and although there are no games that can prove it perfectly at the moment, everything feels the experience with Xbox Series X that you hold a piece of the future. When Halo comes out, we’ll take another look at what Xbox Series X can do: by then we’ll be better used to the console and the ultimate game made for it. We can hardly wait.