With Microsoft being the first console manufacturer on the market to share in-depth details about their next-generation console the Xbox Series X, ahead of Sony sharing details about theirs tomorrow morning, they have shared a summary of known information and more.
The full post by Director of Program Management Jason Ronald, titled “Everything You Need to Know about Xbox Series X and The Future of Xbox… So Far“, is available to read at your leisure. Otherwise, please scroll down for my tl;dr version of what they have shared so far.
Do note that Team Xbox intend on updating this post routinely ahead of launch, so keep an eye for more information in the coming months.
TL;DR (Too Long, Didn’t Read) Summary
- The Xbox Series X will be powered by a custom designed processor including an 8 core Zen 2 CPU. They claim this will deliver more than 4x the processing power of an Xbox One. It will also be powered by a 12 TFLOP RDNA 2 GPU which offers more than 8x the performance of the original Xbox One.
- Memory-wise, the Xbox Series X will come with high bandwidth GDDR6 memory.
- Regarding the controller, they claim it features improved ergonomics, better cross-device connectivity and reduced latency. It also features a new Share button to enable better capture of your iconic gaming moments, and a new hybrid D-Pad. Support with the Xbox One and Windows 10 platforms has been confirmed.
- The Xbox Series X boasts the ‘Xbox Velocity Architecture’, which they claim will “[unlock] a new level of performance through the groundbreaking combination of the next-generation custom SSD, hardware accelerated decompression and deep software integration“. This includes the elimination of most load times and a quick resume feature which allows players to resume a game exactly where they left off across multiple titles simultaneously.
- Backwards compatibility with thousands of games from the original Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox Libraries will be available out of the box from day one. This is something that Microsoft has endeavoured to do for all their consoles either at launch or through post-launch updates. They claim “backwards compatible games run natively on the Xbox Series X hardware, running with the full power of the CPU, GPU and the SSD“.
- Xbox’s Smart Delivery technology allows players to buy a game once and “know that – whether you are playing it on Xbox One or Xbox Series X – you are getting the right version of that game on whatever Xbox you’re playing on“. All first-party games such as Halo Infinite will offer such support, while third-party developers of titles released first on the Xbox One and later released on the Xbox Series X will have the option to include such functionality.
- It should come as no surprise that the Xbox Gamer Pass will be headed to the Xbox Series X as well. All Xbox Game Studios titles launch on the Xbox Game Pass on the same day as their release, so expect a fair few options to download when you buy the console and first boot it up… if you are a subscriber that is.
- Dabbling more into cloud gaming, Team Xbox are launching ‘Project xCloud’ this year. They aim for this service to “empower Xbox Game Pass members to play with their friends anywhere, no download required“.
