Xbox One X

[Walt Flanigan]

The Xbox One X Is The Smallest Xbox Ever, And The Most Powerful Console Ever

Campbell Simpson
Jun 12, 2017, 7:30am


Image: Gizmodo
Microsoft just announced what we've all been waiting for: the birth of Project Scorpio, its much-teased next-generation console. It's now called the Xbox One X, and it's both the smallest Xbox ever built as well as the most powerful console ever — built for gaming on 4K TVs, in HDR, at a smooth 60fps.

The tech specs of the Xbox One X in Microsoft's announcement mirror what have been teased and rumoured for a while now: built around around a 6-teraflop custom-designed GPU, the One X uses a 16-nanometre chip with 17 billion transistors and a custom-designed vapor chamber cooling system to keep it all cool.



It's also somehow the smallest Xbox ever, besting even the Xbox One S and Xbox 360 Slim in size — in part due to that innovative cooling system, and the amount of effort Microsoft has put into making the new console highly integrated and streamlined. Its power and Xbox's optimisation means that it is capable of outputting "true 4K" — something Xbox is talking up a lot — at 60fps and with HDR support.

The "Xbox family" now comprises the One X and the One S, with both being sold simultaneously at different price points. The One X is slightly slimmer, and seems like it'll be a fair bit more portable for those that don't want it to live under the TV forever. It still ships with that same Xbox controller that we've seen since the original One was released.

The One X is significantly more powerful than its main competitor the PlayStation 4 Pro, which has around two thirds the graphical power at 4.2 Teraflops. The new Xbox's custom GPU also runs at 1172MHz versus the 4 Pro's 911MHz and the One S's 853MHz, although you can't directly compare apples for apples especially since the consoles' graphics architecture is different.

Microsoft's newest console is built for 4K gameplay and the latest 4K HDR TVs, but it'll also be a potential investment for anyone with an existing 1080p TV — supersampling lets the new Xbox One X render graphics at 4K and then downscale it to 1080p, showing more detail than anatively 1080p-rendered video.

Similarly, existing Xbox One and 360 games will run better on the One X due to its extra power; the extra power can either make 1080p and 900p titles run at 4K on the One X or the titles themselves will be updated to suit — Microsoft teased a new 'Xbox One X Enhanced' logo that makes this much clear..

Even humble games like Minecraft are getting the 4K treatment, as well as a host of updates besides. Xbox's E3 press conference has included an absolute swathe of new titles, like Sea of Thieves<

The Xbox One X will be out worldwide on November 7. The Australian price of the Xbox One X is $649, a price that's actually cheaper than the One X's international $US499 price point.


https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/06/...xbox-ever-and-the-most-powerful-console-ever/

 

[elyod138]

Seems like a very niche market, can't see it being a big success.

 

[Walt Flanigan]

What's niche about it? Or was that sarcasm?

 

[Firey_Dragon]

Microsoft's conference basically confirmed my fears for scorpio. No real game announcements and a price point that will kill it in the US market.

Anthem and Metro Exodus look awesome, but they're multi platform. The only real exclusive of note was Ori and good luck selling that with basically a new Forza and a 4K patch for gears of war. You won't be able to sell the picture quality difference between Pro and One X in any marketing material. Name as stupid as Pro as well.

A year late to the party, with the same poor game library and at a point of diminishing returns. Sony will drop the price of the Pro by $50-100 guaranteed when scorpio drops.

5 years in a row Xbox E3 conferences have been a trainwreck, super disappointing to see from a company that smashed it out of the park with games in the first 5 years of 360.

 

[elyod138]

What's niche about it? Or was that sarcasm?

If they announced it with a slew of good new exclusive games that make use of the power they might have sold the console to some new people, as it stands I only see people who are already huge Xbox fans buying it.

Microsoft are falling behind due to a lack of exclusive content, adding more power isn't going to help that.

 

[Jono078]

I'm excited about this console. I haven't been paying attention to specific games being released or on the horizon and you guys above seem to suggest Xbox has a shit library.

But as someone looking for the powerful, future proof console that can play 4K bluray, this really interests me.

If Sony had the 4K bluray player I would lean towards them and continue being a PS guy as I have been for the past couple of decades.

 

[adamkungl]

e3 has been a snooze for years

 

[Firey_Dragon]

I'm excited about this console. I haven't been paying attention to specific games being released or on the horizon and you guys above seem to suggest Xbox has a shit library.

But as someone looking for the powerful, future proof console that can play 4K bluray, this really interests me.

If Sony had the 4K bluray player I would lean towards them and continue being a PS guy as I have been for the past couple of decades.

In the US, when this thing launches, you'd probably be able to buy an Xbox One S AND a PS4 Pro for the same price.

It was certainly a disappointing move from Sony not including Ultra HD blu-ray, ultimately though, lack of movie content in the next couple of years is a deciding factor. Hard media is becoming less and less prevalent, games would be my determining factor in buying a console, not a UHD player where I'd buy one or two movies a year for.

Neither console is 'future proof', and the performance gap between them is actually less than the one between PS4 and Xbox One.

Give it 2-3 years and a new console gen will be announced. One of those years, Microsoft has said there'll be little to no new exclusive content.

They really needed to announce a couple of new IP's at this show. I'll personally wait for a significant price reduction and some more games announced before trading in my original xbox one.

 

[perverse]

Future proof is a marketing term when it comes to tech, little more. Agree that content will dictate whether XboneX is a success or not. I'm leaning towards not.

As someone who still hasn't bought any ps4/xbone consoles, I can't say Microsoft have enticed me towards the xbox at all. I'll be getting a ps4 variant when RDR2 drops.

 

[Parra Pride]

As someone who still hasn't bought any ps4/xbone consoles, I can't say Microsoft have enticed me towards the xbox at all. I'll be getting a ps4 variant when RDR2 drops.

Serious question. If buying a console purely for a multi-platform title, is there any reason other than price you wouldn't go for the significantly more powerful option?

 

[Jono078]

Slightly OT - Ok so now watching the Sony conference I would def stick with PS4. GoW and Spidey looked sick.

 

[axl rose]

Slightly OT - Ok so now watching the Sony conference I would def stick with PS4. GoW and Spidey looked sick.

Looking forward to Spidey and Detroit Become Human ( loved Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls) and obviously Call of Duty WW2 and the Battlefield 1 Russian expansion

Couldn't care less- driving games or the Xbox X one Scorpio X 4K X and another Assassins Creed. Yawn.

 

[Firey_Dragon]

Serious question. If buying a console purely for a multi-platform title, is there any reason other than price you wouldn't go for the significantly more powerful option?

Sony and Rockstar have a marketing partnership, so there will probably be more content for RDR2 on playstation.

Scorpio is employing the same checkerboard and dynamic resolution techniques PS4 Pro is to achieve 4k on many titles. Assassins Creed for example is not 4k and only 30fps.

In real world terms, their performance will be pretty comparable with exclusives being showcase titles for the power, of which there is... Forza 7 and that's about it. Both consoles have terrible CPU's to be pushing 4K consistently, but near enough is good enough when you're sitting at least 4 or 5 meters from your TV. If developers prioritize frame rate over resolution, which it seems there has been a shift in the last couple of years, both consoles will be employing dynamic scaling techniques to achieve 60fps.

The big difference between the two is the memory bandwidth, so scorpio can probably push higher resolution textures more consistently, but with various streaming methods, whether you'll actually notice it or not is a different story (running lower res textures further into the draw distance etc).

 

[Iafeta]

I'm old. So my eyes couldn't keep up with faster frame rates anyway. Usually with the type of movies I play I like extra slow motion slash pause mostly.

I'm not getting spooged into a new Forza. I don't think the series knows how to evolve.

Interested in Sea of Thieves, Skull and Bones, FC5 and sadly Assassins Creed. Hey, I like Egyptians !

 

[perverse]

Serious question. If buying a console purely for a multi-platform title, is there any reason other than price you wouldn't go for the significantly more powerful option?

PC master race for anything non-exclusive. I don't really consider it a console I guess, in my life PC is the primary gaming platform, with consoles bought purely on exclusives. As such I've always had a Nintendo console, a Nintendo handheld and one of PS or Xbox.

As for RDR2 specifically, as has been stated, Sony and Rockstar are generally right up each others arses, so I anticipate that more content will come to the Playstation, and sooner. There are other titles on PS4 that sway me that way, too. I'd really like to sink my teeth into Horizon, and I'm still yet to play The Last of Us.

 

[adamkungl]

Lol who cares about this shit the new Mario game has a T-Rex

 

[perverse]

Nintendo knocked it out of the park with their announcements, tbh.

 

[Generalzod]

I was under the assumption that project scorpio was an entirely new console from Microsoft its just an update of the Xbox one

 

[perverse]

I was under the assumption that project scorpio was an entirely new console from Microsoft its just an update of the Xbox one

Microsoft are done with console "generations", or so they claim. My assumption from here on is that they will just release iterations of the same ecosystem with more powerful hardware. Really, for mine, it's just a round about way of saying that they're done trying to innovate in the marketplace and that all their future consoles will have full backward compatibility.

So, whether Scorpio/XboneX is a new console or not is really down to interpretation of Microsoft's console market strategy.

 

[adamkungl]

Microsoft are done with console "generations", or so they claim. My assumption from here on is that they will just release iterations of the same ecosystem with more powerful hardware. Really, for mine, it's just a round about way of saying that they're done trying to innovate in the marketplace and that all their future consoles will have full backward compatibility.

So, whether Scorpio/XboneX is a new console or not is really down to interpretation of Microsoft's console market strategy.

I look forward to the inevitable games working on Xbox One XX2.3 but not the Xbox One.
Or worse, working perfectly on one iteration but a total mess on the other despite being officially compatible.