New details about the Xbox Series X was released this week, touting many of the upcoming new console's power and capabilities. With E3 canceled, and Xbox formerly planning to have a big showing at the yearly gaming event, Microsoft is starting to roll out more and more details about its latest Xbox as its holiday release date draws closer.
Ever since Xbox Series X was teased as Project Scarlett, Xbox has often touted the technical specs of the machine throwing out terms like teraflops and CPU cores. While that sounds impressive, and most likely is, how that power translates into how it makes the user's experience better can sometimes get lost beside the technical specs.
So with the latest specs and information from Microsoft, here is how Xbox Series X is shaping up to make user's gaming life better when the console launches this holiday season.
Bigger, smoother, and more complex games
Microsoft likes to brag that the Xbox Series X will be the most powerful console ever and that it has 12 teraflops of power, Velocity Architecture, GPUs, Raytracing and more. But boiled down, all of that means that game worlds should be able to be bigger, more sophisticated and complex, run at faster frame rates, and look better and smoother. Each piece of the technical puzzle that Xbox has given all plays towards letting game developers achieve bigger and better games.
Faster load times
The second half of all those performance numbers packed into the Xbox Series X is the promise of faster load times. Microsoft just released a tech demo showing how fast load times are for the Xbox Series X in the latest blitz of new information as compared to Microsoft's current top-of-the-line Xbox One X console. The power of the Xbox Series X promises players faster load times, which should affect how quickly they can get into a game to start as well as switching between menus and the various functions of that game.
Keep multiple games open...and switch between them
Both PS4 and Xbox One have a suspend feature that allows players to leave a game in progress and put the console to sleep, then come back at a later time to turn the console back on and pick up in the exact same spot. While that has been around for years in the current console generation, Xbox Series X is taking that a step further with what it's calling Quick Resume. Quick Resume will allow users to have three games open at once and swap between them relatively quickly and pick up in the exact spot where they left off.
There could be some limitations for games that have to connect to servers, but it does give players the freedom to be playing a game like Halo Infinite then swap over to play a couple of games of Fortnite with friends and then when done, switch right back over to Halo Infinite and keep playing. Right now, PS4 and Xbox One have to suspend the current application to launch another, but Quick Resume will up the ante on a current console feature.
Play games from previous generations
Xbox is promising that players will be able to play four console generations of games on the Xbox Series X from the original Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Xbox One has incredible backward compatibility features, which some people may forget was a huge technical achievement Microsoft was able to add to the Xbox One during the course of this console generation. It is something that the PS4 has never been able to do, and this generation has seen a large number of remakes and remasters to port previous generation games onto the current consoles.
With the Xbox Series X, Microsoft says it plans to offer a range of backward compatible titles from its entire history, which eases players into the transition of a new console generation to allow them to continue to play their favorite games from the previous generation all on one console.
Buy a game once, play anywhere
Xbox is implementing a new feature called Smart Delivery. This feature means that players will buy a game once, even if they buy it for Xbox One, and then they can play it on Xbox Series X without having to buy it again, and it will be the native Xbox Series X version in order to take advantage of the more powerful console. Microsoft promises that this feature will be included in every first-party title and it is open to third-party developers to use as well if they so choose. CD Projekt Red has already promised that Cyberpunk 2077 will implement this feature.
The Netflix of video games
Especially as Xbox offers backward compatibility and Smart Delivery, the key to a lot of this is Xbox Game Pass, Xbox's subscription service that gives users access to a library of titles. With Xbox's focus on delivering games across Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Windows PC, and eventually xCloud, it is clear that Xbox is trying to establish itself as a kind of Netflix of video games. In a world of Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, and more subscription services, Xbox seems poised to deliver players with an equivalent experience for video games as it launches into a new console generation.
Xbox Series X launches holiday 2020.