- This is the Xbox Series X,
I've spent a lot of time with this console this year.
So let's take a closer look at what Microsoft
latest and greatest console is all about.
Spoiler alert, this is really the Xbox 1.5
that's not necessarily a bad thing though
there's a whole lot to unpack here
before we get into the unboxing.
Now and on the back, we've got the well,
oh, that's you can't play that yet, can you?
Oh, no, I think it's time to open up the Series X.
Whoa, whoa, yo, that is an unboxing experience, holy
I've waited so long for this, so we have the hardware,
we also have what I assume are our cables, controllers,
that kind of stuff.
So we have an HTMI cable, now unlike a lot of time
when you are unboxing and go whatever
you actually are probably gonna wanna use this
because this is a high speed HDMI 2.1 cable.
Now any HDMI will work with the Series X,
in fact any TV pretty much will work with the Series X
but to get those high frame rates, 8K,
all that kind of stuff, you're gonna want an HDMI 2.1 cable
like the one they've very kindly included
so definitely hold on to this one.
There we go, that's our Xbox box
now, wanna take a look at our Xbox box Xbox box
and that my friends is a retail model of the Xbox Series X,
now of course, this is a little bit more PC like
than most console, so it is a vertical design.
Although I will mention, you can drop it on its side,
so it does have four little rubber feet
so you can use it like this,
but up front it's pretty straightforward.
You have a USB A port, your controller button,
the power button as well as your 4K Blu-ray drive.
So this will accept discs from the original Xbox,
from the 360 and the Xbox one, as well as your DVDs,
Blu-rays all that kind of stuff.
But around back we have a decent amount of ports,
including our HDMI, power, ethernet, two more USB-A
for total of three, as well as the storage expansion module.
Up top, you'll see the big fan itself.
So that is the only fan in the entire Xbox Series X,
but we have done an entire video
talking about the overheating potential
or rather the lack thereof,
which you guys can feel free to check out.
So now I think it's time plug it in
and take a closer look at exactly what you get
with the Xbox Series X for this generation.
Going into this generation, one of the main differences
between these Series X
and the previous generations is in speed.
So yes, the Xbox Series X is the most powerful console
of all time, beating out
of course, all the previous Xboxes
but even slightly beating out the PlayStation Five.
But when you look at the gameplay, it looks nice,
it looks better,
but we're not seeing the kind of massive leap
that we've seen with previous generations, right?
I think going from PS2 to PS3, for example.
A part of that is because the Xbox Series X
as well as the little brother this Series S
are powered by the Xbox Velocity Architecture,
which is code for an SSD.
Now there are certainly doing some stuff on the backend
to actually able to sort of fire hose that data
straight from your SSD unto the graphics.
So there's a lot that they're doing
but generally this is sort of bringing
the console's at parity
to what the PC space has had for a long time.
It's one thing to talk about how fast the console is
but it's really good a good sense of it,
let me give you a little bit of a load time comparison.
So here I have "Watch Dogs: Legion"
a game which is optimized,
for not only the original Xbox One S and X
but also of course has a port
for the Series S and the Series X
and the difference is massive.
Whereas these new consoles can load it in about 21 seconds,
the previous generation consoles
are over a minute and 10 seconds,
that is a massive difference.
Same thing goes for other titles such as Gears 5
while yes on the Series X and S
you're loading in 10, 11 seconds.
The previous generation of consoles
they're 52 seconds and a minute and one second respectively.
Same story for "Dirt 5", you're looking at 12 seconds
on these new consoles compared to 40 and 42 seconds
on the Xbox One
that is something that you will notice
every time you load a game.
Now, when it comes time to play games on the Series X,
generally titles will fall into a couple of categories.
First of all, there's backwards compatible games
these are titles that would already work
on the previous Xbox One.
So things like original Xbox games, 360 games,
Xbox One games, they'll run at least as well on Series X,
if not better than they did before.
Next, there's a series of games
which supports Smart Delivery
so generally these are Xbox One games
that are being optimized for the Series X.
So take, for example, "Forza Horizon 4"
that is a game which gets some improvements
but most importantly, will run at 4k at 60
on the Series X with that patch
of course comes free of charge.
The same thing goes for a lot of other titles
"Gears" is a good one where not only does it get
improved quality settings, 4K60,
but importantly it also supports 120FPS in multiplayer
like another example of an Xbox One game
which is just being modified to work on these consoles.
Now, outside of that, there's a another category of games
which is not an official category, but for me,
they're more of the games that can truly
take advantage of this hardware.
So things that really take advantage of the Ray tracing,
for example, now "Dirt 5" is one of the games,
as well as "Watchdogs Legion"
that are technically Series X native games.
They're not just like patched
but these are the early games from the generation.
As always, I expect things to improve over time
with these games are taking advantage
of things like that Ray tracing
to push the envelope on graphics a bit.
But that being said, when you look at the console generation
that we're coming into with the Xbox Series X
and the PS5,
there's not a killer feature yet, right?
None of these games
look like they're true next gen powerhouses.
They look a little bit better
where you really noticed that difference
besides stuff like the loading times is the fluidity.
The idea that we will see many more games
running at 60FPS is great, 4k60 is a very smooth experience
and at this point I would say the majority of people
who were buying these consoles already have 4k TVs.
If you don't then can I introduce you to my friend
the Xbox Series S, which we'll be doing a much,
more in-depth video on soon.
So make sure to stay tuned but that is a console
which is a little more focused at 1080P
and sub 4k resolutions.
But the idea of you're getting these games,
which will look a little bit better
and will ideally look even better in the future
But importantly, they're running quicker, smoother
and you have the ability to run it even higher frame rates
up to 120 FPS.
So for a good example
of how the frame rate can impact your game
running at 30 FPS means that you get a brand new frame
displayed on your TV every 33.3 milliseconds
you run it 60 FPS, you get a new frame
every 16.7 milliseconds.
However, if you're running at a 120 FPS
you get a new frame, every 8.3 milliseconds.
Now I don't need to tell you the difference between
seeing someone walk around the corner
and eight milliseconds versus 33 can make a huge difference.
Now only just for you to be able to react
but also for your controller to be able to respond, right?
These kind of differences
cannot only just look great, right?
I mean, obviously the game looks super smooth
there's a reason why most phones these days
have higher refresh rate displays
but also you have that performance
inside these new consoles.
Now, I don't want to give you the wrong idea here
the Xbox Series S can run some games at 120 FPS,
the PlayStation 5
will absolutely run games at 120 FPS
and in fact, we've done an entire video
talking about the TVs you need to get
because most TVs today
will not support these high refresh rates.
But the nice thing about this new generation of consoles is
it is pretty much baked in from the start.
So what you're looking at here,
if I'm just to give you the top line of the whole experience
going to next gen is not necessarily games
that look a lot better, right?
From the graphics, there are certainly improvements
and there's more to come.
What you're really going to see
is in the speed of the load times
and just how fast everything moves as far
as the interface goes
and just simply how smooth the games run.
You should expect a higher level of performance
for the vast majority of games this time around,
you know, all those 30 FPS games are gonna be 60.
All those old 60 FPS games are gonna be 120
with some caveats here and there,
but it's a different kind of generational leap
than what we've seen in the past.
When you look at the Series X controller,
this looks very similar to the Xbox One
and I think the theme here is very much evolution.
So if you look at something like the DualSense controller
on the PS5
this is a much more thorough re-imagining
of what a controller can do
now of course make sure to subscribe to the channel
for a lot more on the PS5, as well as the DualSense.
But speaking specifically about this Series X
there are a couple of major improvements.
First of all, it now uses a USB-C port
it also has a new texture grip on the handles.
These shape has been slightly redesigned compared
to the Xbox one
so it's a little more friendly to smaller hands.
You have a new share button as well as a much improved D-pad
but generally speaking,
this is very similar to the Xbox One controller
and in fact, you actually can use this on the Xbox One
and vice versa,
if you already have any Xbox One controllers.
They will work right out of the box with the Series X
and of course, all of this is compatible with the PC
as well as things like your phone as well.
Now there are some under the hood improvements
on the Series X controller.
So things like latency has been improved specifically when
you're using with these brand new consoles,
but generally speaking,
if you like an Xbox One controller,
you'll like the Series X very much a Xbox 1.5 controller.
If I do say so myself,
which considering that I liked the Xbox One controller
more than pretty much anything else, not a bad thing,
but it's not quite as ambitious
it's something like the DualSense.
- [Ken] If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
- It's a great great point unless you can fix it better.
So if you'll humor me for a second,
let's say that the Xbox Series X really
is that Xbox 1.5, right?
So while yes, a lot of things are very similar
there are some major improvements that have been happening
this console generation.
They just simply won't be replicated into the future
and honestly, this is really the backbone
of gaming for the next five, six, seven years plus.
So the thing is while certain aspects of technology
and of gaming are evolving at a super fast pace,
you look at graphics, right?
Which, I mean, this is almost 10 times more powerful
than the Xbox One when it first came out
when it comes to graphics,
but then you look at the memory
which is barely twice as much, right?
Certain things scale at different sort of rates
and the last generation
quite simply was pretty conservative, right?
I mean, the graphics were okay, but those last gen consoles,
weren't all that powerful when you compare them to
even a mid-range PC of 2013.
When you compare that to today,
when you build a fairly high end gaming PC,
you're actually looking at roughly equivalent specs,
the Xbox Series X and the PS5,
that bodes well going into this generation
because you have that baseline of performance
because let's not forget
the vast majority of games out there are designed
with the console's in mind first and PC second, right.
And while yes, I will say that there are certainly
some aspects which feel very much like a quicker Xbox One
but there's also not really a lot of time to think back
on those old days of going from PS1 to PS2
or PS2 to PS3, right?
There's lots of different people who buy consoles
but at the end of the day
I think one of the most important things
is that things are moving forward, right?
And I think it's hard to argue that the Xbox Series X
doesn't move things forward in a pretty major way.
It might not be as flashy as the PS5,
It might not have that trick new controller,
the PS5 does,
it might not be as cheap as the Xbox Series S
but if you are someone who is interested
in the Xbox One,
if you were someone who was interested in a game console
to play actual games on,
unlike some other devices that pretend to be game consoles,
then it's hard to go wrong with the Xbox Series X.
I mean that in a real way, right?
It's easy to get caught up in the speeds and feeds,
it's easy to get caught up in the millisecond
and the megahertz,
but ultimately the Xbox Series X is a refined, quicker,
and ultimately a console that has a whole lot more potential
than the Xbox One ever did.