The Xbox Series X UI Might Not Render At 4K, But Does It Matter?

Seriously, is this what it's come too, bragging rights over the resolution of the ui? Would we even tell the difference if not told?

That’s it I’m cancelling my series x preorder, my life is not worth living and my head is going explode.
I’m in tears and a former man of myself after this news.
I’m off to die another day now.

Give me the series x UI any day
Enjoying it on my one x right now.

I really don't care about this but agree that it does look poor on Xbox to have such a high powered box and using such a low display...if it's actually true. I believe they mentioned that it would be 4K and it was mentioned by Jeff Grubb that they specifically mentioned to all people with the trial units not to focus on it cuz it's not finished so i expect it to be 4K. Another console war casualty. Come on November!!

In the recent review, Austin Evans has confirmed that the menu runs at 120fps. But I would wait for the final UI as there’s already an embargo on the unfinished prototype UI.

I’m a little disappointed but in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter. As long as the games are looking nice that’s what matters.

Considering the constant “we’ll wait for DF” and “most powerful console” thrown about over the past few months, its funny to see that people don’t care all of a sudden 🤔

Regardless, personally as long as the menus transition smoothly i’m not fussed.

I never even noticed the dashboard on One X is 1080p. It's all flat lines, squares and a static background I never focus on.

Maybe if I was sitting say closer I might notice if on the text... 🤷

@Jacko11 don't care because we don't play on the dashboard, and word going around is is that a 4k dashboard could be stealing 1gb of ram from game developers memory budget. I rather the gamea have access to that ram.

I guess PS5 games will be inferior regardless, so I guess what is 1GB less of ram for them 😅

Huh .. i genuinely didn't care about this but seems like i'm wrong all this time? I thought it was like PC when you simply change the display output resolution then UI & everything else will follow up accordingly. So i thought XSX UI runs at 4K when your display & output resolution is 4K 😕

There's no reason for it not to be 4k, but saying that, it's not like all Series S or PS5 games will be running at 4k either, so I'm not sure why it's important that the dash does.

Lol who cares? It's not like it won't be legible in 4k. I'd rather have more resources assigned to games than the UI.

@Jacko11 It's the dashboard!!!

The current dashboard on the Xbox One X|S looks fine on a 4K display so it’s not something that worries me. HDR support on the dashboard would be nice though.

I could care less about the UI being in 4K. It seems like such a useless thing to focus on.

If it makes it run fast and smooth then no harm I suppose, but how come Gears 5, with all that AI, maybe ray tracing (you get the idea), is at 60fps, and this is just a glorified menu?!
If it miraculously restricted quick resume to 6 instead of 7 games (no idea what the upper limit is!) then it might be more acceptable,
It does begger belief though

The Xbox UI is much more complex than PS and I honestly don't care if it needs to render at 1080p and then be upscaled to 4K in order to be as snappy as it is now. I care about resolution in games, that's what matters. And frame rate. And Auto HDR. And Quick Resume.

@Insightful John Linneman does a great job but this is ridiculous, he's saying that it's "really unacceptable" and at the same time he admits it's to "reserve more resources for those all-important games."

Absolutely pointless to have the ui in 4k especially if it potentially takes up more resources or slows it down, seriously if you compared a 4k and 1080p ui would anyone be able to tell seen as its just lines and boxes lol

@BlueOcean The DF guys are great at picking out details and laser focusing on them. It's what makes their tech videos so interesting, but probably also why something like a sub 4k menu would bother him.

OMG no 4K dashboard? However will I cope?! Preorder cancelled. PS5 wins next gen!!!11

Oh no, wait: who cares?

I agree with comments - if it runs smoother then why bother with the 4K, we should just upscale as no-one will notice a difference other than perhaps 0.5% of people sitting 2 feet from a 60 inch tv.

Just wish people would be the same about the games as well. Why bother with all that power on 4K instead of upscaled as pretty much everyone won't be able to tell the difference, then all that power can go on other graphical improvements? or frame rate improvements? Feels like its a bit of wasted resource trying to get that 4K 60fps output?

@FraserG 4K upscaled 1080p UI? Still all good then. Well pretty sure someone from xbox dev team already read these UI stuffs and gonna do something about it.

Definitely not a deal breaker but again if the advantage is coming from some "giant" competitor, fanboys will spin it like "So much from most powerful console in the world 12 tflops bla bla bla but the UI only renders at 1080p??? LOL" and will somehow view their hi-res UI as 'game-changing' feature that redefine next generation gaming 😆

@StylesT Yes you can see it plain as day. The Xbox One X UI looks horrible in 4k because it's noticeably lower resolution. You'd expect that to change with the "world's most powerful console" but no, just like almost everything else next gen, this has been disappointing and a letdown.

@Insightful Me too, I love his videos (and Richard Leadbetter's).

@Richnj I'm a DF nerd since Wii U was released because it is fascinating, a current-gen consoles that in reality is a last-gen console and that was the most powerful console... for one year. I have watched most of their videos since then.

@Tharsman it is easy enough to say word going around without any sources...

I personally would like to see it in 4K. I enjoy my PS4 Pro in 4k and would like my Series X to do the same but only if it has minimal impact. If it causes major disruption to the performance of my games then of course I can do without and 1080p is fine it is certainly not a deal breaker.

You don't play the UI but you use it a lot over the course of the lifecycle of the console. I think I'm just a sucker for the detailed themes etc.

@graysoncharles Having the UI at 4k with all those boxes filled with 4k images uses a LOT more RAM that would need to be taken away from the RAM pool for Game designers. The Series X has 16GB of RAM of which 2.5GB is reserved purely for the System. 1 of the 8 cores of the CPU will be dedicated to System too.

Its not as simple as just making the UI 4k with 'nothing' impacting on the resources MS have allowed for Games. They opted to make their system and therefore the reserves for that system to be as streamlined as possible and still being 'clean' and clear. Boosting the resolution will affect the amount of resources needed by the system.

@endlessleep that will certainly be the conversation early on in the generation. Especially when most of the third party games are running at the same resolution and framerate on both consoles. Until MS deliver something truly next gen over Sony this is what they will attack with.

@Kefka2589 I couldn’t get a Series X so I did likewise. I don’t regret it. Films look weird in 4K. People look all sorts of ugly. 1440p works for me mate 👍🏻

...

ok...

shurgs

I'm trying but I really can't care the UI is "only 1080p" I can read the text from the sofa, seems like thats fine to me.

It would be nice to have 4k and there doesn’t seem to be a technical reason why not. So maybe for a future update? I would prioritize HDR and 120fps UI over 4k. But that’s how I feel about games too. Upscaling works really well.

@Tharsman Source for this? Now where should a UI ever use that many resources. If so it was terribly designed.

But honestly, with how godawful the Xbox UI is, it wouldn't surprise me.

TBH I never even noticed the X1X UI wasn't 4k so I'm not particularly fussed about this. It's nice that PS renders in native resolution, but I can't imagine it matters much beyond fonts being slightly sharper. I imagine MS produced the system font specifically to be sharp when scaled, though, and the interface mostly focuses on flat shaded tiles, so the rendering resolution doesn't matter that much. It's mostly about keeping it fast and responsive, I'm sure, since it's always been a "heavy" UI and is an overlay atop the games. I see why PS went the route they did - their overlay is transparent over the games. XB's is in its own "start menu" binding so it's a self contained render.

HDR in the UI would be nice, though, so displays that "switch" modes don't have that annoying switchover moment when HDR activates.

@InterceptorAlpha 1GB is believable with such a rich UI. that's a lot of images being displayed, and in PS5's case, internet thumbnails, video thumbnails/gifs etc. Yeah, it's believable.

@BlueOcean PS5's new UI seems pretty complex. Too complex. Social complex. For once , XBox is the less socially pushed interface - not doing online stuff? Just don't go to the online stuff tab. PS5's UI has some nice features, but it mostly feels like gaming for the Pinterest/Youtube generation. Bleh.

@Menchi If Win10 had a setting to drop the shell resolution to 640x480 while playing a game to free resources, every PC gamer in the world would use it.

This is a non issue for me i plan on spending hours playing 4K games not staring at the UI all day like a weirdo..

Anything less than 8K 300fps is unacceptable. I don't care about the games. it's the UI i'm paying for.

I can see why they made that choice with One X but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed that Series X had gone the same way. Having said that it seems that the UI is going to be more important on PS5 during gameplay then it is on Xbox so it makes sense they have gone that way, where as on Xbox I don't see myself interacting much with it after I've booted a game

@BlueOcean Yeah, anything Nintendo related from them usually gets my attention. I love seeing how devs work with the weaker hardware. So I've especially enjoyed the Switch vids.

That and the DF retros.

I'm currently rocking a 1080p 55" Sony TV. Will be getting a LG OLED 55" 4K with ability for 120fps for my 40th bday so everything is going to look better to me. Happy days!

@NEStalgia I view it more so as "people willing to accept a company cutting corners" instead of being a premium product in every way. But I guess with what we've seen from Microsoft so far for next gen, it's no surprise this is another compromise.

@NEStalgia All I'm saying is I've built a lot of front ends. Most dwarfing what the Xbox dash does. Still less that 1GB of system space on any of them.

@Menchi I see it the same way I see VCR XBox doubling down on showcasing "it doesn't run hot anymore!" The complains until sumer 2018 about the US were how dog slow it was. I could see them wanting to keep it as zippy as possible without bogging down like that to not fall into that rut again. Maybe it can do 4k. Maybe it already does 4k (hasn't been reported either way yet.) But if it's not, I can see reasons why.

@InterceptorAlpha Was the 1GB number an XBox estimate or a PS5 estimate though? The XBox interface is relatively simple. The PS5 interface looks like it's half web-browser, half front-end. I could see that eating tons of memory.

If, like the One X it would mean less RAM for games then keep it at 1080p, the One X looks fine on my LG C9 55". Would it look sharper at 4k? Sure. Does it matter that much that our games suffer? Hell no!

@Alpha_Pulse The source is Digital Foundry, and they got the word directly from Microsoft. It's easy enough to look it up, but there is the link of one of the many articles covering it, for your pleasure.

@Tharsman that is the series X. Your comment suggested PlayStation consumed the same. This is what I was referring to. Just because the xbox dash takes up 1GB doesn't mean theirs the same.

Just sounds like more fanboyism trash. I imagine if the final product is rendered in 4k you will be singing its praises rather than wallowing about your missing 1GB.

@NEStalgia agree on the PS5 UI. Not sure im sold on it at all. Looks like there's just too much going on but I would have to try it and see. I crave the simplicity of just game tiles to select!

@Alpha_Pulse someone is being a fanboy here, for sure.

These UIs don't just display empty boxes, all those boxes are full of images that need to be high resolution enough for the current rez. Yiu think all those cards that come up on the PS UX are just somehow magically bypassing the RAM?

Btw, this "fanboy" owns 165 PS4 games, and that's just the physical ones. But Im the Xbox fanboy.

I really can’t imagine anything about the console being less important. A 1080p interface is more than anyone needs to navigate a UI between gameplay. Him calling this “not acceptable” is just silly coming from an entity as reputable as Digital Foundry.

I’m far more interested in swapping between ESO and Destiny via a feature like quick resume while waiting on that world boss to respawn, than what the UI looks like while moving from one game to another.

How is the UI rendering at 1080p "unacceptable"? How has this low-res UI compromised his gaming experience now? 😕

My 2 cents, if it’s jarring, then that would be a shame, if it’s not true native 4K it does not matter, if the update damages performance or load times, that would be terrible.

Thanks all for the feedback re 4k assets, system ram and whatever. Guess it was a good choice for speed and resources.
The PS5UI looked good, I remember a patent for the video help system popping up a few years ago, thought it's the kind of thing I would use, but having to have PSN to support it is a big no nay never.

I've never noticed the One X interface isn't 4K. It would be nice I guess but I'd genuinely rather have an extra 1GB of memory free for games.

@Tharsman again I didn't say it bypassed it. I'm saying you are pulling info from one place and using it as the basis for all. I believe the xbox UI is a lot more complex than the PlayStation.

Yeah I'm the fanboy. I have 3 years of xbox gamepass and xsx is my main console. I'm always as objective as I can be. You could have literally said your first paragraph about not caring about 4k and that xbox needs 1GB to run this. But then you went down the traditional fanboy route of trashing the competition as a defence. If it didn't bother you half as much as you say it doesn't you wouldn't have made such a baseless comment.

Of all the things to be upset about, this is not a good one. Completely ridiculous, imo.

@NEStalgia PlayStation Instagram Edition 😂.

I think the PS5 UI needs to be 4k. The Series X does not/can afford not to.

The hints/tips function in the new PS5 UI pulls footage direct from gameplay and displays the current game in the background. It would be jarring if that did not display at 4k.

I think it would be a waste of resources for the Xbox to do it unless it offered the same function. As there is no way Xbox gamers would feel a need to bring up the UI in game that often other than switching between games.

Digital Foundrys job to pick that stuff up and talk about it. But kind of pointless.

@BlueOcean That's horrifyingly accurate!

@Jaxx420 fwiw, xb has always displayed the game behind the ui/start menu. But rendering the ui like an osd at a lower res isn't problematic. Heck many games render their own ui at lower resolution then the game world and scale it. Ps5, yeah that browser needs it.

@NEStalgia Xbox always showed the game picture in background. On the PS5 UI reveal it showed actually inside the game in the background. Its that bit I thought would be jarring not in 4k. Sorry for confusion!

If this means more free ram for games, I’ll be happy with it. However, they might update later if there is not a specific reason to keep the UI resolution lower.

I never noticed this kind of thing and I never would have know this was a thing if nobody mentioned it. I got a One X and all I know is that it always seems to be running in 4K. If they upscale things it makes no difference as it all looks like 4K to me.