Talking Point: What's Your Favourite Thing About Xbox Series X|S After Two Years?

My favourite thing about my series S is its affordable entry point into xbox gaming, I'm mainly a playstation user and if it wasn't for the series S I don't think I'd be gaming on xbox as well this gen. Its a nice sleek quiet console and I would reccomend any playstation gamer to get one, atleast for its exclusives.

I think just the faster loading in general is my favourite thing about these new consoles, it could become tiresome the last couple of generations but now its hardly noticable

Playing my 360 disc of Ninja Gaiden 2 enhanced on the Series X. Great feature

Quick resume hands down.

@carlos82 exactly. This Gen seems more like a performance upgrade. I think we have hit diminishing returns on graphics. Load times, quick resume are my favs and of course GamePass.

Gamepass.

Unreal VFM.

It's not an Xbox Series S/X thing, but since I've never had an Xbox before, it's gotta be GamePass.
If not, the Series S' price. In my country it's the same price as a PS4.

With this being my first foray into team green, Game Pass has been absolutely fantastic. Not just day one releases but the amount of great indie games being added on here is just gold.

If we're talking hardware specific my Series X beats the PS5 hands down in terms of build quality and best feature has to be Quick Resume

I like smart delivery, quick resume and fast load times like any other reasonable person but by far my favourite feature is not even an exclusive of it but it is Game pass...

I love the FPS boost. Considering my backlog has pretty much put me a generation behind.

@Lup It's only this year I've been seriously grinding reward points for free game pass ultimate. I had 19000-ish reward points on the 18th of October, redeemed ultimate and already have over 21000 points before the 18th of this month thanks to streak boost and the fact I was able to complete my mobile search for the 1000 points Welcome to Microsoft Rewards today by downloading the firefox browser (thanks google search) and setting bing as my search engine on it to count towards searches after signing in.
On topic, fast load times. Still waiting for the games lol.

1. Cheap Gamepass using Gold conversion.
2. All my mates are on the platform too. Great for multiplayer.
3. xCloud.

Having access to many titles that are compromised/unavailable on the Switch, and having Game Pass to allow me to spend a lot less on stuff I would buy but not feel attached to.

Game boost and 60 fps for most games. I've gotten so use to playing at 60 fps that 30 fps gives me s headache.

I've been a big fan of the boost mode to improve older games and auto hdr. I love me some day 1 releases for indies, the quality of indie release and xcloud on gamepass so I can play when I can't get the tv. I'd love some more 1st party stuff though, it's been pretty dry this year unfortunately.

It was free with my phone contract, still waiting on the must play

Hmmm... that's hard... I really love all the Japanese support Xbox has been getting, there's a lot more variety this generation than there ever has been in the past.

I like how well the cloud save system works between devices. I can instantly pick up where I left off on my series x, series S, pc, laptop or mobile cloud gaming.

@rockodoodle I think in general gaming hasn't really changed much in about a decade, like you say its diminishing returns visually and it's more about refinement from what we already have

Best: Quick Resume
Worst: Download Speeds

1. Backward Compatibility
2. FPS boost to last gen games
3. Gamepass

Being able to have multiple games in “quick resume” state. I also have a PS5, and you can only suspend 1 game at a time on that.

As yet I haven't really been blown away by "next gen" in terms of games yet.

One of the big selling points was ray tracing. It is just a buzz word at this point on console with the biggest difference I have seen it make to games is to lower FPS.

I guess my favourite thing would be gamepass, which I still consider to be excellent value. Even if 2022 has been a bit of a dud for me in terms of new games I still have a lot of options for things to play on it.

Also the potential of the series X in particular is exciting. We should start to see what it can do in 2023 with Motorsport and Starfield. I just hope Xbox can keep that momentum going so we don't have another "2022" again in the future.

All those MASSIVE 1st party games we were promised day 1 on gamepass!!!! Studio after studio churning out all the triple-A bangers to really show off the new systems!!

2 years down the line & still waiting🤣🤣🤣

The first Xbox i ever bought and my favorite things are the BC allowing me to play across generations on one machine, quick resume is great, how quiet it is and gamepass!

(Sorry for the wall of text)

Quick resume is my top feature. Before I would start a game and play nothing else until I was done with that game due to how annoying it was to jump between games. Now even mid fight I can decide to pause and switch games. It’s just magical.

Runner ups:
Smart delivery is another big one, and after pulling my hair off dealing with PlayStation upgrade entitlement garbage, it’s become very clear how incredible Smart Delivery actually is. Not only does it just works, but it also means seamless transfer of save data back and forth between generations, that brings me to:

Cloud Saves. Not an X|S specific feature but having multiple consoles around the house, and occasionally streaming a game, having cloud saves seamlessly transfer to and from any gen, and cloud… it’s magical. Sony upgrade thing has turned my PS4 pro into a paperweight because I can’t really transfer save data back to it unless I’m playing a PS4 only version of a game, and good luck dealing with the ridiculous manual way of pushing and pulling save data from the stream.

FPS Boost is also fantastic, bringing new life into last gen games, but can’t put it higher since it’s limited to a no-longer-growing list of games.

A non-feature that I find a feature is the controller. It’s just the same old controller, but a bit polished. Minor changes that make it more comfortable overall, but nothing life changing. After constantly touching the new rombus-shaped touch pad on the PS5, and the elevated positions of the share/option buttons, I find it simply “a feature” that they didn’t bleep with the controller too much.

Lately been having some network speed issues, that I think are due to my own network, but the option of streaming some Xbox games via XCloud, combined with cloud saves, allow me to sometimes just treat XCloud on my phone as a pseudo-switch, allowing me to just go to my deck and play some games there when the weather is nice.

All these things combine in the reason this this gen I will play all third party games on Xbox over PlayStation.

@Somebody i forgot about the cloud saves. Being able to play across multiple devices is great. With xcloud is like having the Xbox in your pocket at times.

Quick Resume in between Persona 5 Royal, Football Manager 23 and Hades. Switching games on the fly is just amazing especially if you're playing a long game and need a breather into something more casual.

Quick Resume. Genuinely changes how I play games. Switching between them so quickly (and as someone who games a hell of a lot) has been a revelation for me and not something I will be able to easily live without in the future.

I didnt really play on console before this generation. Was mostly a pc gamer. I switched to console for the comfort and lower cost to buy something new. Decided to go with Xbox (have a ps5 now as well) first because of the following reasons :

-Quick Resume
-Smart delivery
-Backwards compatibility
-Gamepass

i'm still very happy with my purchase.

By far Game Pass and Quick Resume are my 2 favourite things, love the console. Glad I saved up all my Christmas and Birthday money and got one.

Game Pass. Also, having the most powerful console on the planet helps. Now Microsoft just has to come out with a game that reflects that power.

No idea. Probably Game Pass. It's a very good offer for your first 3 years.
A lot of features listed by people here are just confusing in use to me (quick resume - I had 7 games in it, now I have 4, the ones I ran first, no idea why the more recent 3 got closed; smart delivery - I own Series S and if possible would rather use old versions of most games anyway)..

I've only had mine for a couple of months, and when I read about quick resume I though a bit "what's the big deal about it?". I find myself really linking it, I boot up my console and I'm playing in literally seconds. I didn't think much of it, but I do actually love it.

For one, it's having the most powerful Xbox console again. I never upgraded my 2014 Xbox One so it's been a long time since I could say I'm getting the optimal experience. Beyond that, I've got to say a big reason I got a Series X was not just because I wanted to play games like Halo Infinite, Forza Horizon 5, King of Fighters XV, Sonic Frontiers, etc, at their best but also because I'm a huge fan of the original Xbox and especially the 360 and the Series X has excellent backwards compatibility. Most of my favorites are available and with some having One X and Series X enhancements, it makes things even better. Hope they find a way to get a few more games added to the bc catalog in the future.

The console design itself and the some the features, like quick resume.
Then for the sort of wrong reasons FH5 and Halo Infinite campaign a bit.
My point great console shame about the rest.

Fave is Game Pass, although the selection needs to be better moving forward. Also appreciate the general ease when using the system, features like smart delivery.

@Dezzy70
This. It's kind of sad, actually. This gen Sony has commited enough blunders for Xbox to make up a lot of ground. However, it's mostly been Phil congratulating the competition on launching a banger after banger with little to cheer for on the Xbox side of things. On the positive side: Series X is the best console I've ever used design-wise. Features like quick resume and smart delivery, along with auto HDR and fps boost are fantastic. But, no first party games. Yes, I know about development cycles etc but when you're launching a console you have to bring more than hardware. I moved to PC and don't see myself coming back. Still, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Xbox and those bangers in 2023. Sony deserves worthy competition.

I like the compact design of both consoles and how seamlessly they work together.

Gamepass is great

Microsoft rewards is great

The thing i love the most is i essentially get 4 consoles in one xbox series x/s, xbox one, xbox 360 and xbox

@UltimateOtaku91 Did not expect that answer coming from you - LOL! No offense to you at all - so don't take it as mean-spirited.

On topic:

I love the convenience of Series X (and Xbox as a whole): cross-gen is seamless, backwards compatibility gets full hardware benefits (including significantly reduced load times), and save files easily transfer between PC and console. Things have been so smooth and simple on the Xbox side of the fence.

I also like that Microsoft provide added benefit to legacy games with Auto HDR and FPS Boost. For example, I started playing Dragon Quest XI the other day and holy cow is the image quality so much better in Dolby Vision! Playing in SDR seemed over saturated with color.

I have the Switch version, but stopped playing it for a long time, so I figured I would play the Xbox version since I needed a good refresher anyways. I don't think I can go back to the Switch version after seeing it on the Series X.

I guess that brings me to feature set. Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos support are amazing. I like that Dolby Atmos works for both headphones (set it to Movie and Detailed preset for best spatial effect in Headphones) and Home Theater systems. Dolby Vision just makes games look incredible. VRR is stellar as well.

@gollumb82
Definitely the series x is the best designed and best featured console. Though Sony keep adding things to theirs like VRR so they are getting a little bit better.
Microsoft have basically turned up at the race track with best and fastest and featured car without a driver.
Sales wise UK, especially the last few weeks I’ve seen hundreds of PS5 sell so fast and the poor series x consoles just on the shelves.
The gap is also growing world wide now with nearly 100,000 PS5 and Switch more sold each week.
It’s sad really but Microsoft deserve it but our Xbox console doesn’t.

Sales wise UK, especially the last few weeks I’ve seen hundreds of PS5 sell so fast and the poor series x consoles just on the shelves.
The gap is also growing world wide now with nearly 100,000 PS5 and Switch more sold each week.
It’s sad really but Microsoft deserve it but our Xbox console doesn’t.

Goes to show no one give a dam really about the £30 price increase and being more expensive than the series x and game pass really.
As I have said all along and others, it’s exclusives top end AAA and clever advertising that count.

The crazy part is there isn’t really anything i dislike from the Design to the features and services to price to performance ratio, it’s all there. The only thing missing now is the heavy hitting games they spent money on to bring AAA experiences to the Xbox fans. Only nitpick i have is clear up the Home Screen on the UI. It’s cluttered and full of ad’s that do nothing for me. I’d also like to see 4K pics on the achievements tab. Small things but wanted to include them just to be fair.

Also Xbox just keep giving out the wrong messages.
Phil with his I’m playing GOWR.
Xbox getting power saving graphics modes.

How about here’s gameplay of Redfall, FH5 and Starfield and here are the release dates all before end of June 2023, as promised.

Notice the difference and some potential things to get us motivated and some momentum behind the Xbox brand.

I can’t work out Xbox right now, can’t believe if they are dumb, just don’t care or just chilled about the whole thing.

Having access to Halo again. I skipped the Xbox One. I love Game Pass and I love playing Sea of Thieves with my wife on our Series Xs. It's a great time. Also having access to indie games I wouldn't usually buy.

I bought my brother a Series S with Game Pass and I love hearing what he's playing on there too.

Gamepass Gamepass Gamepass - I haven't purchased a single game yet and put far more hours into the Series X than the PS5 (which has amazing games but I can't afford them all at release).

Backwards compatibility, Game Pass, Series X enhancements, FPS Boost, Smart Delivery... I think that the most impressive new feature is Quick Resume. I also love Series X design, power and efficiency and how old digital (and physical!) purchases are acknowledged.

The low cost of the series s, the fast loading times and and all the games I have access to with game pass that won’t come to the Nintendo switch.

I like how well designed it is and it’s whisper quiet, very impressive for such a compact little machine. Gamepass has been great too, plenty of smaller titles I’ve enjoyed which I probably never would have without it. Faster loading is definitely one of the biggest benefits too.

If they can start pumping out decent first party triple A games a few times a year I’ll be more than happy. Of the 2 current consoles I prefer the X.

Honestly, although we're still waiting for a lot of the big first party releases to arrive, the Xbox itself is just so unbelievably easy and convenient to use, and all of the features compliment eachother so well that the value of the whole is far more than the sum of its parts. Backwards Compatibility, GamePass, Cloud Gaming, Smart Delivery and Quick Resume are all fantastic features individually, but together they are an absolutely UNBEATABLE combination. I don't even mind that I paid so much for expandable storage, because once the storage is there it feels like it turbocharges all of those other features! Gaming has never been so easy, trying to play a game on any of my other consoles just feels like pulling teeth in comparison

Ssd, cpu, fps boost, auto hdr, quick resume, all of the above

I had a One S. Playing Outer Worlds was the moment I really fell out of love with that console. The load times just killed it towards the end. The SX was such a massive upgrade in performance. Everything immediately felt so much better to just jump in and play. Add to that FPS boost on games like Skyrim SE, which I was in the middle of playing when the feature was added. What an eye opening experience that was, 30fps one day, 60fps the next. It's improvements like that, across the board, that just make everything about gaming on SX feel smoother, faster, and more accessible.

Love the convenience and value of game pass, but for a multi platform gamer, the series x has done little to justify its existence for me and Id have been almost as well served just sticking with an xbox one. Theres very little software that comes anywhere close to showing what the machine can do and thats on Microsoft, and its very dissapointing as the hardware is decent, if uninspired.
I've owned every single gaming console released in the uk since gaming began, as well as many imports, and theres very few machines that have had a worse opening two years.
As a cheap way to play a few 3rd party games and lots of indies, its been ok, but im a big budget AAA 'push the hardware' kinda guy, and it simply hasnt delivered what I want - yet. There are signs the titles I crave are coming next year, so lets hope this happens.
I do appreciate we all want something different, so many will be far more satisified than I, and Im glad for them. But I hope to god something kicks off next year cause im personally very disappointed in my wife being right when she told me to 'forget xbox this time round untl they get exclusives worth owning.'
Always dissapointed when my wife is proved right and I didnt listen... but she knew I was always gonna buy one anyway 😂

Might sound funny, but the controllers are fantastic. My hands get sore playing the Switch or any handhelds & I can just game for hours. I love all of the options to tweak the system & alter the backgrounds, groups for games and the catalogue I have goes back 20 years and even my Xbox OG discs work. Power options & accessibility options are top notch and the value is really there. Gamepass is good.

Areas for improvement:
get rid of ads on the dashboard.

Redesign the dashboard to focus on games, we keep saying we liked the 360 blades because they simple & snappy. Doesn't have to be the same but let us pick our games & jump in. Move on from Windows 8! The "tiles" are OUT of style lol.

Release more limited editions of the console (especially the S, X would be nice) or some first party skins.

Release more games than controllers & maybe introduce a new next gen controller instead of reskins of the same one?

Stagger the first party releases so they CONSISTENTLY come out otherwise it's a wasted sub for Gamepass if we pay for a few months or a year & things don't come out on time (of course it needs time for quality but Nintendo oftem have finished games sitting there totally done before shadow dropped).

I love my Series X but KI also love my PS5.

The Series X controller should be as good as the PS5.

@GamingFan4Lyf haha that's fine, I know I have some playstation bias as I've been gaming with them since day one and I get a lot of flack on here when I defend them, but I still like to game on xbox and I like my series S, even broke my rule of just using it for gamepass as well, by buying over £140 worth of games over the last two months.

The speed of the system, my Series S making absolutely no noise, the non existant loading times, Quick Resume that I can't live without now, FPS Boost, Gamepass and the Dashboard, can't wait for the new Dashboard though, that one looks even better

Had my Series X for almost a year and it's been good so far. Things I like are...

1) Backwards compatibility
2) fps boost for some of my all time favorite games like Gears 2 & 3
3) fast SSD load times
4) Game Pass, even though I prefer to buy physical games. GP is still a great deal!

Dislikes...

1) lack of first party exclusives
2) dated controller design(no Gyro, adaptive triggers, haptic feedback, hd rumble, ect)
3)expensive proprietary SSD expansion cards, compared to the M.2 SSD used for PS5

Favourite thing... Faster loading on X.
Worst thing, system is to slow on dashboard.
But could be because I have extra internal memory and 3 hd drives holding 1070 game's on them.

Haven’t played it for 6 months. Probably will for Starfield.

My favourite things about the SeriesX are the combined convenience, power, and quietness of the fans. It's a great combo.

I have a PC with an RTX3070, which is better than a SeriesX, but the difference isn't huge. The main advantage is raytracing and the ability to play almost anything at 60fps+, ie games that are capped at 30 on the xbox.

Anyway the point is, I find myself playing games on the SeriesX far more than the PC, despite the PC being more powerful.

I forgot two major points - back combatibility and quick resume. They are two huge factors that go in favour of the SeriesX over PC. Being able to play good 360 games at 4k60 is amazing, so is quick resume to swap between games within seconds.

So to answer the question it would be - Power, convenience, quietness, back compatibility, and quick resume.

My favorite thing about it is that I was able to get one a few months back. Really enjoying it.

Quick resume loading times! It’s amazing and has had a big impact on how I approach my time for gaming.

As someone who had a Xbox One X, it's definitely the improved frame rate, like 4K gaming at 60fps and the occasional 120fps title, it's something that's way beyond what we could do before. I remember how simply playing games in 4K in general was a big deal when the One X came out, but the Series X feels like it's properly designed around doing 4K gaming well. The FPS boost for 360 and One games has breathed new life into titles as well.

One thing I really love on top of that is the Xbox community. It felt like I was one of the only people who loved and preferred the One last gen, but this gen Xbox fans have been coming on strong and it's really become the best community in gaming IMO.

Emulation, playing ps2 games on xbox is great although I guess it shows how little new content there is on the system...

The library. More specifically, backward compatibility.

I'd like to say Quick Resume is a great feature, but for every time it works great, picking up a game I left off a couple weeks ago at the exact moment I left off in 15 seconds, there's just as many times where it doesn't work. Like with almost any online game you'll need to re-boot or it won't work properly, and with Guardians of the Galaxy the more you use Quick Resume it slowly messes up the game and drops the frame rate as you play.

While I really like my Series X we're in an era of gaming where generational leaps are pretty slim. Sure we're getting higher resolutions and texture details, but I've yet to play a game that really does feel "Next Gen". When you look at all the "remastered" and "enhanced" versions of last generation games there's a difference for sure, but you need to see them side by side. There's no way you'd confuse MGS1 and MGS2 screenshots.

Quick resume

I had a PS5 for the exclusives, Series X for everything else, playing on a 55inch Oled 4k TV , the overall experience was better on series X, notably a few games have better resolution than PS5, which is noticeable on a 4k TV, Gamepass is excellent value too

Gamepass, SSD (faster loading speeds), Quick Resume (when it works it's brilliant) in that order.

All the exclusive games

@hbkay Wasteland 3?

@Deljo how do you manage that?

@el_pieablo it's really easy bud, retro arch is a available as a download so no modding to do, it had been only available through the developer mode which was a paid subscription but it's now available for free. Plenty of tutorial videos on utube which is what I followed

It's all about those fast load times for me. My gaming time is limited these days so being able to just jump into a game and start playing is awesome.
Going back to playing games on my lad's launch day Xbox One is rough!

For me it has to be how small and light the Series S is. It is just so transportable, and can go from a to b with such ease you could literally take it anywhere. Not to rag on Sony as they have solid exclusive games and I like their stuff too (I was a ps4 player before my hard drive got damaged). That being said, the ps5 is genuinely hideous. The thing is bloody enormous too. Otherwise, I'd say the load times are superb on the new hardware.

@Deljo Try using XBSX2 emulator. Amazing emulator for PS2. Been playing quite a few of my older titles at 4k60. For the most part games run and look amazing. A few titles need to be changed to software rendering but give it a go and you shouldnt be dissapointed.

Auto HDR, FPS boost and quick resume are my favorite things. Being able to suspend a game instead of grinding to a save point makes playing a lot more pleasant.
The controller improvements are nice too.

1) Faster loading pages
2) More available games
3) Quick boot up

By far my favorite feature is reduced load times!

The whole console was an amazing upgrade. Nothing was Earth shatteringly new, but so many subtle upgrades have made for a very happy gamer.