Roundup: First Hands-On Impressions Of The Xbox Series X

Yeah I mean, even if there aren't many (or any) first-party games at launch, just having a much smoother experience with your current games is enough for me. I won't be buying a Series X at launch though, but it's definitely going to be my next system. I still have my original Xbox One and I never upgraded it this generation so I'm very excited to see how different Series X will be compared to it!

No thanks I will wait for Eurogamer/Digitalfoundry.

November 10 can't come fast enough. Opinions are positive for the Xbox Series X. I want try out for myself though.

Wont see a huge leap until gears6 etc imo

Did they get the series S as well to try out? For the X everything is lining up with what MS has been telling us so I'm curious if all the skepticism from a lot of these outlets regarding the S has been put to bed. Crazy to think that MS has been telling the truth and many have been questioning them while Sony has been lying and few say boo. I can't wait to try mine out, I'm playing on a laptop right now, PS3 was my last console so the upgrades will be crazy. No more loading!!

@Thretosix There’s NDA of course as this is a prototype unit. But Microsoft has been really confident and transparent with their hardware as early as from February. The sheer fact that they have already started sending out hardware units to all reviewers 2 months before launch is really appreciable.

I'll be really excited to see gameplay taking full advantage of the series X. I am very happy about the further enhancements to older titles as well since I do use the backwards compatibility feature often.

Good to hear. I'm currently holding off buying games (and working on my backlog) so I can play them on my new ps5 with shorter loading times.

I hope you can download mods for Skyrim via the backwards compatibility. I want to run all the mods that previously made my game crash and then do laps running through Dragon Bridge. That place nearly always crashes no matter what mods you use.

Sounds like a fantastic machine!

Reading these makes me all giddy like a little kid on Christmas.

Can’t wait for the Digital Foundry videos to show what these systems are really capable of.

The excitement levels at this point are through the roof, next gen can’t come quick enough!

This is why I will still need to get a PS5 as well as Series X - I have so many games in my backlog that I'm looking forward to going through without any of the loading times (looking at you witcher and bloodborne!) and it is actually my most anticipated part of next gen - the loading times and the redesign of games based on the hard drive speeds.
I personally thought the step up from PS3/360 gen to PS4/XboxOne gen was a massive improvement with the quicker UI and instant load for the games in progress but knowing all this is yet again improved...

SSDs are a serious improvement for the console, more than anything else. This is the one thing that I no longer compromise on PC and it's good to finally have them here !

Actually, I thought the 7 year gen for X1 and PS4 felt more natural than PS360's lifespans. In any case, it's good to know the Series X appears to be living up to the hype.

So basically: Xbox One X Remastered edition

Are there hands on impressions on the Series S already too?

Nice, Can't wait to get my hands on the Series X..

@graysoncharles Yes it's very likely HDDs will get seriously outdated / plain unsupported in future PC gaming. It's already unsupported for XS/PS5 games. People with 2To/4To will have it hard.

Improved loading times will be a huge difference.

The extra power could help games that are sluggish even on my Xbox One X. But I would have said the same about the Xbox One X at one time. In reality, devs often increase the resolution, lighting effects, or other graphical features; so you end up with the same low framerate you had before. No Man's Sky and Subnautica are a couple examples.

It's disappointing that a whopping 200 gigs of memory are locked off for the operating system and default programs. That leaves 800GB when some games are over 100GB each. And next-gen games will presumably be bigger. The 800GB will be good enough for general use, though.

I'm eager to see the details of how each current game specifically uses the power. Ray tracing in Sea of Thieves?

I think it'll take until Spring or Summer 2021 until there are a good menu of games that were fully designed from scratch to be great on Xbox SX. Until then we won't see the full advantage of the console.

@Thretosix for games that have unlocked framerates such as sekiro or ffxv, it will be solid 60fps, plus auto hdr for non hdr games

A few videos:

https://youtu.be/CX67PjX8eCg

https://youtu.be/eS6m-fOyZmc?t=11m20s

https://youtu.be/g2oSMwSuUcI

It will be even faster when games are optimised.

Sounds good. Hopefully we get to see some lovely next gen games running on it soon.

@Thretosix @Sylcolene Why did I complete Final Fantasy XV Royal Edition on Xbox One X before getting a Series X? It's a gorgeous game and one of my favourite games of the generation.

I still can't believe they went with 5400rpm 2.5" drives in 2013 for Xbox One. It was about 13 years out of date at the time and with all that physical space in there? Yikes.

@Menchi What really puzzles me is why Switch loading times are so awful? Is it because of the compression or something else? It uses flash memory for internal storage and game cards. I've always wondered why it's so inefficient.

Does anybody know?

@BlueOcean It's the lack of processing power. Load times involve storage, cpu, gpu and even to an extent, RAM. Even if you remove the time to access assets (like Switch's flash memory) if it has terrible processing power in all other departments, those will drag it down. The Switch being so absolutely woeful is why this happens.

@Menchi I see...

@BlueOcean Switch benchmarks below high end PC 2006 GPUs (7800 GTX SLI) and a CPU significantly worse than current 8th gen consoles.

@BlueOcean As @Medic_Alert stated, memory bandwidth is the biggest current bottle neck. But just fixing that will expose the next and the so on...

For those who haven't seen it yet the links above to Digital Foundry YouTube vid is the best look at the Series X capability out there right now

SWOOON

I can't wait to get rid of these load times!

@Thretosix I assume XV went with checkerboard just because they copy and pasted from PS4 Pro. It's Square, the company delivering a Switch port of DQXI to PS5 and XSeX.... I don't know if they plan to upgrade it on the new consoles or not. Probably not, but it would be nice.

@Menchi I, too was astounded at the use of 2.5" 5200RPM drives. It felt so backward. Even by PC low end standards that just seemed so astronomically slow and stupid. The speed difference just with a USB 7200 drive is astronomical vs the internal drop to a degree that it makes no sense at all. One X, at least should have gone all the way. No reason not to other than noise and power draw.

@Thretosix i believe ffxv quality mode on one x using 4k dynamic resolution capped at 30fps. So it will hit true 4k all the time, but locked at 30fps.

@TooBarFoo @Medic_Alert Yep, then the first bottleneck of Switch must be memory bandwidth.

@Thretosix It's great to have Digital Foundry's first Series X video. Considering that the backwards compatible games are not optimised for Series X/S it's a huge difference already. I'll love to see at least the removal of caps.

@Sylcolene Final Fantasy XV quality mode is called High and it's dynamic resolution scaling up to 4K at 30fps as you said. The Lite mode is 1080p uncapped (30-40 on Xbox One X and 60 on Series X).

@FraserG tnx!

When you get your Series X, in Final Fantasy XV select the Lite mode for 60fps at 1080p or the High mode for 30fps (capped) in 4K. Ignore Steady mode.

In Monster Hunter World, you want to select Resolution mode because it's up to 4K at 60fps. You can try Graphics mode, 1080p60 but higher level of detail. Ignore Performance mode because it has the lowest level of detail like Resolution and runs at 1080p.

Microsoft talked about an automatic process for improving older games so hopefully we'll see the improvements without having to wait for developers to patch their games.

All these articles are very heartening to hear. Can't wait to get my hands on mine in launch day.
Console is definitely my place to be, have hardly used my 1070ti at all, just happy to know it's there more than anything, but will never ever be spending £600+ on a new GPU.

@BlueOcean yeah i forgot about it, i mean it's just confusing 😂

@Medic_Alert Maneater developer also said it clearly, xbox one - xbox series is a single SKU
Ps4-ps5 is a different SKU
Here is the link
https://forums.tripwireinteractive.com/index.php?threads/maneater-evolves-with-next-gen-enhancements.2336583/

@Sylcolene Quite much 😁.

@Sylcolene That Man Eater information is quite interesting, PS5 and PS4 don't share save files 🤔.

Another source:

https://wccftech.com/dont-expect-your-ps4-saves-to-work-on-playstation-5/amp/

@BlueOcean i avoid using wccftech as a trusted source, but for yakuza case i think it's 100% valid.
But thank you 👍

@Sylcolene It must be a valid source in this case since they are pasting the developer's tweet.