- This is a fully functional Xbox Series X.
So I think it is time to finally play some games.
So I've been using early preview unit
of the Xbox Series X for a few days now.
And while the full review will certainly have to wait.
So make sure you're subscribed.
There is a lot to talk about here.
So I have spent time back in February playing some games
on the Series X, including a version of Minecraft.
That is a demo with ray tracing.
Now ray tracing is of course one of the features
on both the Series X and the PS5.
While this particular gameplay is
certainly very much a beta.
We don't actually know if it will ever ship,
but if you look at something like Minecraft
for RTX, you can see that there's a ton of potential here.
We've also seen Gears 5 running
at above ultra PC spec, at 4K 60 on the Series X
and a number of different gameplay trailers and bits
and pieces that hopefully will be shipping
before the end of the year or the end of next year
or at just at some point in our lives.
However, today I have a handful of games
that I can actually play today
that are fully functional on the Series X.
So let's take a look because there's definitely
some very interesting things here.
So first of all, I have Forza Horizon 3.
So this is the game that came out back for the Xbox One
and it subsequently did get a patch for the One X.
So it's running in full 4K.
But if I want I can hop out to go
into a game like Gears of War.
This is an original Xbox 360 game
from a the way back in 2006.
And because it does have not only the Xbox One X patch,
which means that it is gonna run at the higher resolution.
As you can see, the performance is absolutely flawless.
One of the nice things about this,
is that no matter what you wanna play,
you essentially can play it on the Series X.
So of course, all Series S and X games are compatible.
The vast majority of Xbox One games are compatible
and you also have 360 games as well as original Xbox games.
If you could play it on an older Xbox
pretty much everything can be
okay, let me rephrase
you can't play everything everything,
but you can play the vast majority of Xbox titles
than have ever been made on the Series X.
- All of the good ones.
- Okay, there's a couple-
yeah, all the good ones, yeah, it's pretty fair.
So depending on the game you'll get some base level
of added performance.
So first of all, load times are going to be better
across the board and I'll talk a little bit
about that in a second.
But beyond that if a game has dynamic resolution,
the extra headroom on the CPU and the GPU
of the Series X is always unlocked.
So you should be always at like 4K
or whatever the max that the game supports
and same thing goes for the frame rate.
If there's any kind of unlocked frame rate
if you were maybe 40 or 50 FPS on a game on the Xbox One
or the One X that should pretty much always be at 60,
just because there's so much more power in the Series X.
Alternatively, in the case of a game like Gears,
which has actually seen the Series X patch,
for that, you're getting those higher graphics settings
and specifically the ability to run at higher frame rates.
So the Series X does support 120 FPS right out of the box.
And Gears 5 for example, will be able
to allow you to do 120 FPS in the multiplayer.
But from what I've heard,
it actually is fairly straightforward
if you have a game running on Xbox One,
to unlock a higher frame rate without having to do
a ton of work to the rest of the game.
So we may see some hybrid titles
where there are full Series X releases,
there are just Xbox One games running
in backwards compatibility.
And then you could have essentially
the same game that you were running on Xbox One,
just running at double the frame rate.
Which if that's possible, would be very, very cool.
Now let's take a look at a few games
that haven't been optimized for the Series X at all
beyond the more powerful CPU and graphics, of course,
there's that standard SSD.
So if you load up a copy of Forza Horizon 3,
it's not even close.
Where the Series X gets into the game
in just over 10 seconds, the one X takes 45 seconds.
And the One X is even slower at 53 seconds.
If you load up Halo 5, which is of course
an earlier release from 2015 for the Xbox One.
Again, it is absolutely no contest.
The Series X loads up the level in just under nine seconds.
And that's including
there's a five second deployment countdown.
Interestingly, the One S is actually
a little bit faster here than the One X
at 26 seconds compared to 33.
But regardless another very clear win
for the Series X.
The biggest test here though really is Red Dead Redemption 2.
Now this is a game that pretty much taxes
the current consoles to the max kinda it's like GTA 5 taxed
to the Xbox 360 and the PS3 when it first came out.
And because of that, the load times specifically
are very, very slow.
Throw it on the Series X though, and it is much better.
It's still not blisteringly fast at 37 seconds.
When you consider that's a full minute faster
than what you get on the One S or the One X.
I think it's pretty clear
that with literally no optimization
just having that SSD and the more powerful CPU,
you're seeing a pretty decent upgrade.
Just for fun, I wanted to try out
how fast an Xbox 360 game would load.
So I chose Gears of War 1.
Now this is a game which was much simpler
and was meant to run on a disc.
So even the SSD in the Series X
while it makes a difference, isn't a massive difference.
Although a few seconds is still a few seconds.
I even tried original Xbox game, Fusion Frenzy
but well, all three consoles loaded it up almost instantly.
So didn't really feel like that was worth testing.
Now this is just a taste of the improvements
that you can expect loading games on the Series X
with that standard SSD it's going to help all games, period.
But especially when you consider that you can have a game
which is a little bit better optimized
for the Velocity Architecture
and get significantly better performance
with the compressed speed on the SSD.
You should actually expect to see Xbox Series X games
that are fully built for the console to load even faster.
Something else that all games get for free is Quick Resume.
So right now I'm playing Forza Horizon 3,
just like I was before, and if I want,
I can hop out and jump into Gears of War
and you will see that because I've already loaded up
with Quick Resume, it's going to jump me right in.
So I don't have to wait for the entire game to load
or anything like that.
It, after just a few seconds, gets right in.
So one of the nice things about as I die
Quick Resume, is that it will actually load multiple games
at the same time.
So now I'll go ahead and jump in.
You can see little Quick Resume, little icon show up.
I can jump into Red Dead 2.
So this is not infinite, you can't just load
every single game of all time.
You can load more older games
because they take up less memory
because essentially this is all
just being loaded off of the SSD.
You can see I'm playing Red Dead.
Oh, I'm done with Red Dead.
I'm gonna jump into Fusion Frenzy.
And even though this is an original Xbox game
it is still supported here.
If you give it just a second, I will be right
in the middle of the game where I left off.
So Quick Resume is something that
is still being tweaked and optimized.
But as you can see right now,
I can jump between four or five games really easily.
And it's all completely seamless.
You don't have to think about it.
You can turn it off if you want, for some reason
you can still quit the game if you wanna get out of it
and start a fresh.
But it's nice to have this pretty much just
always running in the background.
I feel like that's one of the things that
this next generation of consoles
is really gonna provide is a sense of fluidity.
Things just happen really fast.
You don't have to sit around and wait for three minutes
for your game to load, moving back and forth between them.
Everything is just gonna happen much quicker.
We're gonna get used to it really quick.
So technically this is not final hardware
for the Xbox Series X, however, concerning that it works
and it is fully functional.
We're just gonna say that it's close enough for right now.
Oops, that's not supposed to be here.
We're just gonna censor this,
this doesn't, this doesn't exist.
Let's take a little bit of a closer look at.
So first of all, it is dense.
So I actually don't know how much it weighs,
but it is a, it's not light.
The Series X is...
4.4 kilos.
Or in freedom units, 9.1 wait, nine pounds, 13 ounces.
It's like a baby, a big heavy baby.
So you'll see that it is significantly like thicker,
but when you actually look at it,
it doesn't actually take up that much more space.
It's more just sort of the footprint than anything else.
So I can confirm that the Series X is in fact,
the thickest Xbox of all time.
So if we take a quick look around the Series X,
you'll see that it is very similar to that dummy model
that we unboxed a little while ago.
So we have our Bluray drive up front
as well as our console pair button,
a USB-A port as well as the power button,
nothing on the sides.
However, as you come around back
you'll see we have our two more USB-A ports
for a total of three, Ethernet, the figure eight power cable,
the expansion module
which is where you will plug in the memory cards
or the storage, whatever, the memory cards.
And you also have HDMI 2.1 out.
So interestingly you can see that there's definitely some
sort of grills on the bottom as well as on the side.
And just like we've showed in our teardown,
all of that heat is pulled up through the top
and exhausted through the fan on top
where of course this little dish is not an LED
unlike what it looks like in all the videos.
And then there's the controller, so at first glance
the Series X controller, it looks identical to the Xbox One.
However, it's been pretty much tweaked
and tuned in basically all areas.
So the shape is now slightly different
to accommodate different sizes of hands.
You have a new textured finish
you have an upgraded D-pad, better latency.
You also have a share button
but if you wanna know more about the controller
check out the video we did over on our second channel
This Is where we go much more in depth
on the various different controllers
that you can use on the Xbox and what not
and make sure to stay tuned to the channel here
because there's a lot, a lot more to talk about
with the Xboxes and the Playstations
over the next couple of months.
You're subscribed, right?