Xbox Series X

[LakotaDakota]

Full specs & loads of info now out, Biggest downsides seem to be no optical out & Series X games not working from external drives as they are too slow (can be used to play current gen games), The solution to this is effectively going back to proprietary memory cards although this time they are 1tb NVMe drives, no word on what they will cost yet but they will not be cheap (current basic standalone 1tb nvme is about £150) and the 1tb built into the console isn't going to last long with some current gen games already well over 100gb.

Other than that it looks like they have crammed a 2 grand pc into a smallish black box

Pretty amazing that they have let digital foundry just completely take it all apart & show everything months before release. Obviously couldn't care less what sony have come up with

 

 

https://news.xbox.com/en-us/2020/03/16/xbox-series-x-tech/

CPU	8x Cores @ 3.8 GHz (3.6 GHz w/ SMT) Custom Zen 2 CPU
GPU	12 TFLOPS, 52 CUs @ 1.825 GHz Custom RDNA 2 GPU
Die Size	360.45 mm2
Process	7nm Enhanced
Memory	16 GB GDDR6 w/ 320b bus
Memory Bandwidth	10GB @ 560 GB/s, 6GB @ 336 GB/s
Internal Storage	1 TB Custom NVME SSD
I/O Throughput	2.4 GB/s (Raw), 4.8 GB/s (Compressed, with custom hardware decompression block)
Expandable Storage	1 TB Expansion Card (matches internal storage exactly)
External Storage	USB 3.2 External HDD Support
Optical Drive	4K UHD Blu-Ray Drive
Performance Target	4K @ 60 FPS, Up to 120 FPS

Edited March 16, 2020 by LakotaDakota

[terrytini]

So for a clueless troglodyte like me who has the X box One X - what’s the main three reasons I’d want to immediately get this, if there are any ? 
Many thanks.

[PieFacE]

29 minutes ago, terrytini said:

So for a clueless troglodyte like me who has the X box One X - what’s the main three reasons I’d want to immediately get this, if there are any ? 
Many thanks.

60FPS gaming at 4K, if that floats your boat.

[terrytini]

10 minutes ago, PieFacE said:

60FPS gaming at 4K, if that floats your boat.

But the One X is 4K ? 

[PieFacE]

5 minutes ago, terrytini said:

But the One X is 4K ? 

The Series X is a significant improvrmrny over On X.Series x has  MCUH bette CPU, better RAM, better GPU, an SSD.

The CPUin th One X ishit which prevents gams. being played t 60FPS.

[terrytini]

2 minutes ago, PieFacE said:

The Series X is a significant improvrmrny over On X.Series x has  MCUH bette CPU, better RAM, better GPU, an SSD.

The CPUin th One X ishit which prevents gams. being played t 60FPS.

I appreciate your help mate - but I’m trying to say, what difference will I see or get that would make it worth getting ?

Of itself, greats CPU etc means little to me....a bit like a car having a top speed of 200 mph when there’s a 70 mph speed limit.

Im very open to being enlightened

[villa4europe]

1 hour ago, terrytini said:

So for a clueless troglodyte like me who has the X box One X - what’s the main three reasons I’d want to immediately get this, if there are any ? 
Many thanks.

Timing with your own finances and exclusive games

For me personally I think it's going to be interesting that the first game most of us will pick up at launch for these new consoles is cyberpunk which sounds like it's going to be a massive game that the current gen will be under a strain to play which will demonstrate the ability of the new ones, that's what will do it for me, it won't just look shinier I think it will genuinely play better on the new machines 

I also went back to play killzone yesterday on the PS4 which was the first game I got this gen, the jump from that to resident evil 3 which I also played this week isn't that mental (killzone holds up pretty well, the lighting effects which amazed me first time round are still great) 

Edited March 28, 2020 by villa4europe

[Daweii]

On 16/03/2020 at 20:31, LakotaDakota said:

The solution to this is effectively going back to proprietary memory cards although this time they are 1tb NVMe drives, no word on what they will cost yet but they will not be cheap (current basic standalone 1tb nvme is about £150) and the 1tb built into the console isn't going to last long with some current gen games already well over 100gb.

That's not necessarily true and here's why;

Currently games are massive, I mean its 171GB for Modern Warfare alone right now, but the majority of this is because the most used files are duplicated and placed in almost every directory that makes up the game. The reason for this is HDD's are slow and more importantly console HDD's are slow (5400RPM) so they duplicate files to make up for the extremely low seek times of the drive. If they didn't duplicate files then a game like Modern Warfare would take 10 minutes to load instead of 50 seconds, but the downside to this duplication is file sizes explode which we're seeing today.

So in an SSD only future we'll see file sizes actually shrink. SSD's don't have a seek time because everything is instant, now they do have a speed which governs how fast they can read the file after accessing it instantly, but without seek times there is no need to duplicate anything. So right off the bat games on Series X and PS5 could be 50% smaller depending how much duplication games had to do in the past. Though that's only one aspect of it as these systems aren't dealing with raw file sizes anymore, everything on Series X and PS5 is also compressed and decompressed in real time. 

For instance Series X is using what Microsoft call "Intelligent Delivery" which they describe as follows;

Quote

Microsoft’s developer facing technology to reduce the size of game installs. Intelligent Delivery empowers developers to only install the pieces of the game you need, thereby minimising the amount of content that needs to be installed or downloaded to the SSD.

What this means is that games are no longer a whole. So lets say that Black Ops 5 on Series X is 75GB for everything. You can download that whole 75GB and play the single player, co-op and multiplayer, but you can also just download the single player which may be 50GB, or just the multiplayer which may be 25GB. This will play a huge role in minimising file size and making 1TB look absolutely massive compared to current-gen. 

Intelligent Delivery is just one technology at play here though. The other is what Microsoft are calling "Hardware Decompression";

Quote

Hardware decompression is a dedicated hardware component introduced with Xbox Series X to allow games to consume as little space as possible on the SSD while eliminating all CPU overhead typically associated with run-time decompression. It reduces the software overhead of decompression when operating at full SSD performance from more than three CPU cores to zero – thereby freeing considerable CPU power for the game to spend on areas like better gameplay and improved framerates. Hardware decompression is one of the components of the Xbox Velocity Architecture.

So we already know that games will be smaller due to a lack of duplication, they'll also be smaller due to Intelligent Delivery, but they'll also be smaller because after all of that the files on the drive will be compressed. Now we don't know how much they'll be compressed, but there is every chance that games in next-gen will be 75-80% smaller than they are today. This also has other benefits as the Series X SSD runs faster with compressed assets, it goes from 2.4GB/s raw to upwards of 5GB/s while files are compressed. So not only will games be smaller, but they'll also load faster when in their compressed state. 

The write ups on the technology was taken from this page right here: Xbox.com - Series X Glossary

Looking at gaming through a current-gen lens makes 1TB seem like an absurd decision, but Microsoft have considered this and have several technologies at play to make 1TB feel bigger than it ever has before.

[Daweii]

1 hour ago, terrytini said:

So for a clueless troglodyte like me who has the X box One X - what’s the main three reasons I’d want to immediately get this, if there are any ? 
Many thanks.

A lot of it is yet to be seen because Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 essentially tear up the rule book for how games are made.

The biggest change in next-gen is the move to ultra-fast SSDs (Solid State Drives) which in Series X is offering a 40x increase in loading/streaming speed over Xbox One X with PS5 being closer to an 80x increase.

What this means at a basic level is almost no loading. I am sure you've played a game over the years with excessive elevator use (Mass Effect), or really long and slow shimmying through small gaps (Jedi: Fallen Order) which is done because the console can't load the next area in time. Now those sections are hiding loading screens in a really clever way, but these are limitations that developers have to develop around. Without loading screens we'll potentially see things in games that we have never seen before at a size, scale and level of detail that has never been possible before. We are yet to see what developers can come up with now that the shackles of loading have been removed, but I am sure we're in for a generation of truly mind blowing games. 

That said next-gen will be limited by current-gen for at least a year because very few publishers are going to go all in on a new platform with a limited install base. So immediate reasons to get it? I don't think there are any unless you really want the better graphics and better performance. Series X is a game changer of a console, it's absurdly powerful and will be a great piece of tech to own, but I think current-gen will slow down just how much we see of the consoles power initially. 

[terrytini]

Thanks @Daweii....very interesting !.......but.....towards the end you said “ unless you want the better graphics and better performance”

Yes, I do......but I got the X Box One X for the better graphics and to be honest it’s negligible, I mean, it’s better, but I need to compare them to tell.  Would this be the same ?

As for performance I take your point on load screens and see why that would be vital to some but other than that it doesn’t seem like I have performance issues.

So it sounds like it’s not got much to offer until the games match I guess ?

[Daweii]

6 hours ago, terrytini said:

Thanks @Daweii....very interesting !.......but.....towards the end you said “ unless you want the better graphics and better performance”

Yes, I do......but I got the X Box One X for the better graphics and to be honest it’s negligible, I mean, it’s better, but I need to compare them to tell.  Would this be the same ?

As for performance I take your point on load screens and see why that would be vital to some but other than that it doesn’t seem like I have performance issues.

So it sounds like it’s not got much to offer until the games match I guess ?

Xbox One X was in a weird place as a console because just like PS4 Pro it was the first time a mid-generation refresh increased performance. Usually when you get such a refresh it's a PS3 Slim, or Xbox One S where it's a slimmer version of the exact same console. With Xbox One X though it did have a performance upgrade, but it was always held back by the weakest system in the pack which was the basic Xbox One. What this essentially meant is Xbox One X became the box that can play games at a higher resolution, or a higher frame rate, but not always with better visuals which as you noticed lead to negligible differences between the two.

Xbox Series X on the other hand is an all new console generation that isn't held back by the previous generation. This means if they want the Series X version of Halo: Infinite to have the best graphics the world has ever seen then they'll do it. Now Microsoft have said that Series X exclusives will have an Xbox One/One X version, but whatever version they get will likely be a heavily pared back version both visually and from a resolution perspective. So where as Xbox One and One X have negligible differences in visuals at times, I do expect that Series X games will look dramatically better.

What I want is for Microsoft to start showing off some games. I know they have a timeline that they are working towards so they aren't ready to show games yet, but it would really help a lot to showcase just what Series X can do. 

[PieFacE]

On 29/03/2020 at 02:58, Daweii said:

 

What I want is for Microsoft to start showing off some games. I know they have a timeline that they are working towards so they aren't ready to show games yet, but it would really help a lot to showcase just what Series X can do. 

Yeah I'm guessing they will be showing off the new Halo, Fable and a few others to showcase what the Series X can do.

[villa4europe]

They need to show what these new studios are doing

New halo, new fable, new forza, new gears of war... Same old xbox

[PieFacE]

Hellblade 2 will likely get showcased.

InXile are apparently working on a AAA RPG game. 

I'm curious what The Initiative are working on. 

Edited March 31, 2020 by PieFacE

[villa4europe]

from phil spencer - 

 or the momentum of the platform, it’s not about any one day, it’s about a sustained stream of great games coming from our first party and our third party partners,”

It doesn’t really help somebody to have eight games launched on one day, and I think you can pace those out

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/phil-spencer-talks-xbox-series-x-launch-lineup/1100-6475548/

I still think cyberpunk is a next gen console seller so that's the big title that makes it worth upgrading but as expected I wont be getting an series x at launch, it'll be after the price drop for me (please be quicker than the switch!)

[PieFacE]

I watched his interview with Unlocked, sounds like they're going to be competitive on price. $499 would be my guess with Gamepass thrown in for a few months, which will be incredible for the hardware and software available. 

Edited April 2, 2020 by PieFacE

[Chindie]

I'm still waiting for them to pull the rug from under Gamepass. I'm not convinced a subscription where all first party titles are available day one for a minimal fee is sustainable, and they only reason they've offered as much is because of the hole they found themselves in. If they get out of the hole with the generation change they'll quickly claw things back.

The other issue they have for me, is Microsoft's first party stable is still a bit crap. Obviously they're aware of that, hence the acquisition run, but still what they've got doesn't look likely to put out anything that competes with Sony, who this generation blew the doors off with exclusives of exactly the type I want to play. The only thing Microsoft has that is a draw for me first party is Forza, and even those are being run into the ground. Gears, Halo? Meh, and they're a good decade away from top class releases in either. Fable has potential and Playground clearly has talent, but otherwise, bleh.

[PieFacE]

1 minute ago, Chindie said:

The other issue they have for me, is Microsoft's first party stable is still a bit crap. Obviously they're aware of that, hence the acquisition run, but still what they've got doesn't look likely to put out anything that competes with Sony, who this generation blew the doors off with exclusives of exactly the type I want to play. The only thing Microsoft has that is a draw for me first party is Forza, and even those are being run into the ground. Gears, Halo? Meh, and they're a good decade away from top class releases in either. Fable has potential and Playground clearly has talent, but otherwise, bleh.

Think that's a fair statement. Will be interesting to see what their new studios are up to. But yeah, there's a distinct lack of single player experience type games that Sony are so good at making with TLOU, Uncharted (meh imo), Spiderman, Horizon, GOW.

I suspect The Initiative will be making a game of that nature and they've hired a lot of talent, but might be shite. 

[lapal_fan]

I guess with the growing amount of cross-play games, they'll be hoping the hardware power over the PS5 will drag a few buyers their way. 

[Daweii]

I also have a feeling that Microsoft will bolster their 15 first party studios (and rising) with third party exclusives. Microsoft were pretty tame in the Xbox One generation because spending masses of money when it's not going to make a huge impact to console sales was a waste, but I think Microsoft are coming out swinging this time. I fully expect a couple unannounced Series X titles to be third party exclusives from beloved franchises. 

I think what is important to realise is yes the standard output of exclusives might be pretty mundane at this point, I mean we're approaching 15 years of Gears of War so it's a little long in the tooth at this point, but the future is bright;

- Hellblade 2 (Ninja Theory)
- Project Mara (Ninja Theory)
- Everwild (Rare)
- Untitled AAA RPG (InXile Entertainment)
- Untitled AAA RPG (Obsidian Entertainment)
- Untitled AAA IP (Undead Labs)
- Untitled AAA IP (The Initiative)
- Untitled AAA IP (Compulsion Games)
- Untitled AAA IP (Double Fine) 

People have been crying out for new IP and new exclusives from Microsoft for years and now we're getting loads of them. At minimum we're hitting Series X with potentially 8 all new IP that will be exclusives. Now the quality of the games is unknown, but it's a start and I'm curious to see where they go from here.