5 ms·

The Xbox One X: Initial Impressions

20 points by deafcalculus 9y ago

Frenchgeek 9y ago
tl;dr; It's small and the graphics look nice.
SurrealSoul 9y ago
I am expecting a Xbox 3 at some point, so that way microsoft will follow tesla's naming schema Xbox S, Xbox [3], Xbox X Tesla S, Tesla 3, Tesla X S3X sells.
- ythn 9y ago
  XboX one X => XXX => Sex Box Confirmed
- bhhaskin 9y ago
  Xbox One == XBO Xbox One X == XBOX
- Fej 9y ago
  There was an Xbox 360 E model.
janvdberg 9y ago
Xbox = XB Xbox 360 = 360 Xbox One = XBO Xbox One X = XBOX
sremani 9y ago
This is an interesting play, where Microsoft will sell both XBox One S and XBox One X as contemporary devices. X => $499 (4k native being the prime attraction) S => $249 (Original perf bit less than PS4) Have to see how Games world would react to the reality of optimizing for two Consoles and Single plat. Depends on 4K TVs popular uptake. Interesting times!
- sqeaky 9y ago
  Devs seem to be optimizing for an infinite variations of PCs just fine. Modern consoles on a hardware level are closer to PCs than they have been in the past. Pick good algorithms, plan ahead to use as much as of the available resources as possible (but no more) and know what variables you can scale on. This is general game optimization for any platform. Only when the profiler's show you issues in one platform and not the will game devs need to break out #ifdefs and write high level game code differently. This isn't like ye olden time of the original NES where the whole game must be written in handcrafted insanely optimized assembly. There are fewer major architectural decisions to make that are significant between platforms. It used to be that one system had memory dedicate to parallax scrolling and another had memory dedicate to rotating texture in increments other than 90 degrees, now they all do most basic operations pretty well and the expensive things are all expensive in the same way.
MBCook 9y ago
I'm kind of amazed this made it to the front page considering there is so little here. I don't see how MS intends to sell them though. The Xbox One S is currently $200. Even if that's temporary it seems like a lock that they might drop the price again to $200 for the holidays. A PS4 Pro is $400 assuming no bundles or price cuts. So how in the world do you get people to pay $500 for the Xbox One X? It's 2.5x as expensive as your previous/current/lower-end console. It's at least 25% more than the competition's high end console. And that's price, so it doesn't include the ecosystem and software and such. $500 just seems like a big obstacle to success.
- dguaraglia 9y ago
  Simple answer (as an occasional gamer who's owned both consoles in different generations): the reason people will stay with Microsoft is the library. It's a pain in the ass to pay $50 for the same game you paid $60 last year on a different console. Why will people buy the new console? It's just a natural progression. You could make the same argument about "why would people buy a PS4 Pro" and here you have me, buying one simply because (with the discounts at the right time) upgrading only cost ~$150 and I wanted the latest and greatest. I can't even imagine how much more motivation actual gamers feel about upgrading.
  - basseq 9y ago
    I'd clarify and say it's the brand library. I bought an Xbox One because I wanted to play the Halo series, which I knew I couldn't do on PS4. The same might apply if you were really into Gears of War or Forza. Otherwise, most people who "switch" consoles keep the legacy console to play "old" games rather than shelling out for the same content twice. Particularly now in the age of account-specific digital downloads that you can't sell / recoup on the secondary market.
- vesrah 9y ago
  Where is it for $200 right now?
  - CameronBanga 9y ago
subb 9y ago
You can get "true 4k" out of the console, but rendering at 4K is so taxing you'll chew all the extra processing power out of that GPU. That means that if developers want to increase rendering quality other than spatial resolution, they will probably resort to checkerboard rendering and/or dynamic resolution, which they needed to do on PS4 Pro. Of course, overall, you can probably expect better quality than a PS4 Pro, since there's more power. It's just not very wise to use that to output at 4k, especially when most people will have a hard time noticing the difference at living room distance from their TV.
- pwthornton 9y ago
  Agreed. They are pushing 4K for marketing, but if developers largely aimed for 1080p, 60fps with HDR, the games would probably look a lot better, especially since most people do not have a 4K TV that they sit close enough to to even tell the difference. It kind of makes me sad.
  - subb 9y ago
    Yea. 60fps is tricky though, because the CPU is not twice as fast. With that GPU power you could render at 60fps at 1080p, but your game simulation might have a hard time reaching that speed.
  - ClassyJacket 9y ago
    1440p might be a nice middle ground for people with 4k TVs. Depends how much antialiasing you can drop when you bump the resolution. Personally I'd be fine with chrckerboard rendering if it looks good in practice and allows higher quality graphics. True 4K could be reserved for VR.
grillvogel 9y ago
i'm pretty skeptical of this thing. the only people who care about specs are the pc gaming crowd, and the specs are probably still not good enough for them. the software library is also basically a subset of the playstation game library, with hardly any unique microsoft exclusives.
floatboth 9y ago
"One X" and "One S", where have I seen that before… http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_s-4574.php http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_s-4574.php http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_x-4320.php http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_x-4320.php also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-X
faragon 9y ago
Is the "new Microsoft" going to allow running Linux in that device? I would buy one, in that case.
Richs99 9y ago
I don't really get the argument that not many people have 4k TVs, or wouldn't be thinking of getting one anyway this year. I've had one for 2 years and I'd hardly call myself an early adopter when it comes to TV. You can pick up a 49" 4k for considerably less than the price of the X1X these days, hardly a massive commitment to fully appreciate the better GFX
- tonvei 9y ago
  Why in the world would you buy a 49" 4k tv. You would need to sit like 3 feet away to even notice a difference between 1080
faragon 9y ago
Can someone explain how if the PS4 (without "pro") with its 2 GFLOPS is not able to run complex games at 1080p at 60Hz, while the the XBox One X, with just 6 GFLOPS, is marketted as able to render games at 60Hz in 4K? Note that 4K requires 4 times the fillrate of 1080p, and that the memory bandwidth increase is just about +50%, and the CPU performance increase has been small in comparison.
- mort96 9y ago
  Isn't a lot of the "4k" in consoles really just rendering at a lower resolution and upscaling?
  - anonova 9y ago
    Yes, a lot of games target 1800p with checkboard rendering and upscale to 2160p. The PS4 has native hardware acceleration for checkerboard rendering.[1] [2] [1]: http://wccftech.com/blow-checkerboard-rendering-ps4pro-isnt-completely-free-might-better-uses-power/ http://wccftech.com/blow-checkerboard-rendering-ps4pro-isnt-... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboard_rendering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboard_rendering
Fej 9y ago
One of the things that no one seems to notice about the XboneX is hidden down in the spec sheet. FreeSync. It supports FreeSync. This is weirdly interesting... perhaps an attempt by AMD to push back against G-Sync's dominance.

20 points by deafcalculus 9y ago

tl;dr; It's small and the graphics look nice.

I am expecting a Xbox 3 at some point, so that way microsoft will follow tesla's naming schema Xbox S, Xbox [3], Xbox X Tesla S, Tesla 3, Tesla X S3X sells.

ythn 9y ago
XboX one X => XXX => Sex Box Confirmed
bhhaskin 9y ago
Xbox One == XBO Xbox One X == XBOX
Fej 9y ago
There was an Xbox 360 E model.

janvdberg 9y ago

Xbox = XB Xbox 360 = 360 Xbox One = XBO Xbox One X = XBOX

sremani 9y ago

This is an interesting play, where Microsoft will sell both XBox One S and XBox One X as contemporary devices. X => $499 (4k native being the prime attraction) S => $249 (Original perf bit less than PS4) Have to see how Games world would react to the reality of optimizing for two Consoles and Single plat. Depends on 4K TVs popular uptake. Interesting times!

sqeaky 9y ago
Devs seem to be optimizing for an infinite variations of PCs just fine. Modern consoles on a hardware level are closer to PCs than they have been in the past. Pick good algorithms, plan ahead to use as much as of the available resources as possible (but no more) and know what variables you can scale on. This is general game optimization for any platform. Only when the profiler's show you issues in one platform and not the will game devs need to break out #ifdefs and write high level game code differently. This isn't like ye olden time of the original NES where the whole game must be written in handcrafted insanely optimized assembly. There are fewer major architectural decisions to make that are significant between platforms. It used to be that one system had memory dedicate to parallax scrolling and another had memory dedicate to rotating texture in increments other than 90 degrees, now they all do most basic operations pretty well and the expensive things are all expensive in the same way.

MBCook 9y ago

I'm kind of amazed this made it to the front page considering there is so little here. I don't see how MS intends to sell them though. The Xbox One S is currently $200. Even if that's temporary it seems like a lock that they might drop the price again to $200 for the holidays. A PS4 Pro is $400 assuming no bundles or price cuts. So how in the world do you get people to pay $500 for the Xbox One X? It's 2.5x as expensive as your previous/current/lower-end console. It's at least 25% more than the competition's high end console. And that's price, so it doesn't include the ecosystem and software and such. $500 just seems like a big obstacle to success.

dguaraglia 9y ago
Simple answer (as an occasional gamer who's owned both consoles in different generations): the reason people will stay with Microsoft is the library. It's a pain in the ass to pay $50 for the same game you paid $60 last year on a different console. Why will people buy the new console? It's just a natural progression. You could make the same argument about "why would people buy a PS4 Pro" and here you have me, buying one simply because (with the discounts at the right time) upgrading only cost ~$150 and I wanted the latest and greatest. I can't even imagine how much more motivation actual gamers feel about upgrading.
- basseq 9y ago
  I'd clarify and say it's the brand library. I bought an Xbox One because I wanted to play the Halo series, which I knew I couldn't do on PS4. The same might apply if you were really into Gears of War or Forza. Otherwise, most people who "switch" consoles keep the legacy console to play "old" games rather than shelling out for the same content twice. Particularly now in the age of account-specific digital downloads that you can't sell / recoup on the secondary market.
vesrah 9y ago
Where is it for $200 right now?
- CameronBanga 9y ago

subb 9y ago

You can get "true 4k" out of the console, but rendering at 4K is so taxing you'll chew all the extra processing power out of that GPU. That means that if developers want to increase rendering quality other than spatial resolution, they will probably resort to checkerboard rendering and/or dynamic resolution, which they needed to do on PS4 Pro. Of course, overall, you can probably expect better quality than a PS4 Pro, since there's more power. It's just not very wise to use that to output at 4k, especially when most people will have a hard time noticing the difference at living room distance from their TV.

pwthornton 9y ago
Agreed. They are pushing 4K for marketing, but if developers largely aimed for 1080p, 60fps with HDR, the games would probably look a lot better, especially since most people do not have a 4K TV that they sit close enough to to even tell the difference. It kind of makes me sad.
- subb 9y ago
  Yea. 60fps is tricky though, because the CPU is not twice as fast. With that GPU power you could render at 60fps at 1080p, but your game simulation might have a hard time reaching that speed.
- ClassyJacket 9y ago
  1440p might be a nice middle ground for people with 4k TVs. Depends how much antialiasing you can drop when you bump the resolution. Personally I'd be fine with chrckerboard rendering if it looks good in practice and allows higher quality graphics. True 4K could be reserved for VR.

grillvogel 9y ago

i'm pretty skeptical of this thing. the only people who care about specs are the pc gaming crowd, and the specs are probably still not good enough for them. the software library is also basically a subset of the playstation game library, with hardly any unique microsoft exclusives.

floatboth 9y ago

"One X" and "One S", where have I seen that before… http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_s-4574.php http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_s-4574.php http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_x-4320.php http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_one_x-4320.php also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-X https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-X

faragon 9y ago

Is the "new Microsoft" going to allow running Linux in that device? I would buy one, in that case.

Richs99 9y ago

I don't really get the argument that not many people have 4k TVs, or wouldn't be thinking of getting one anyway this year. I've had one for 2 years and I'd hardly call myself an early adopter when it comes to TV. You can pick up a 49" 4k for considerably less than the price of the X1X these days, hardly a massive commitment to fully appreciate the better GFX

tonvei 9y ago
Why in the world would you buy a 49" 4k tv. You would need to sit like 3 feet away to even notice a difference between 1080

faragon 9y ago

Can someone explain how if the PS4 (without "pro") with its 2 GFLOPS is not able to run complex games at 1080p at 60Hz, while the the XBox One X, with just 6 GFLOPS, is marketted as able to render games at 60Hz in 4K? Note that 4K requires 4 times the fillrate of 1080p, and that the memory bandwidth increase is just about +50%, and the CPU performance increase has been small in comparison.

mort96 9y ago
Isn't a lot of the "4k" in consoles really just rendering at a lower resolution and upscaling?
- anonova 9y ago
  Yes, a lot of games target 1800p with checkboard rendering and upscale to 2160p. The PS4 has native hardware acceleration for checkerboard rendering.[1] [2] [1]: http://wccftech.com/blow-checkerboard-rendering-ps4pro-isnt-completely-free-might-better-uses-power/ http://wccftech.com/blow-checkerboard-rendering-ps4pro-isnt-... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboard_rendering https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checkerboard_rendering

Fej 9y ago

One of the things that no one seems to notice about the XboneX is hidden down in the spec sheet. FreeSync. It supports FreeSync. This is weirdly interesting... perhaps an attempt by AMD to push back against G-Sync's dominance.