The Game Awards 2019 revealed to us our first look at the next generation of Xbox, the Xbox Series X. It looks like a PC tower, which is appropriate given the leaps and bounds Microsoft has made in the last year with PC integration and Steam sharing, but what other info do we have on what lies in the road ahead for 2020?
New Xbox Series X details
First things first, the graphics. Right now, the Xbox One X is the most powerful console on the market meant to rival that of the PlayStation 4 Pro. When it comes to taking that a step further, Xboss Phil Spencer told GameSpot, “We wanted to have a dramatic upgrade from the Xbox One base console. So when we do the math, we’re over eight times the GPU power of the Xbox One, and two times what an Xbox One X is.”
The gist is that the Xbox Series X will hit 12 teraFLOPS, give or take, with AMD leading the charge for the new system’s GPU/CPU. Added to that is ray tracing for stunning levels of realism and an 8K resolution with a 120Hz refresh rate. Regarding the CPU side of the new system:
“On the CPU side, which is [something] we really wanted to push relative to previous generations, we have four times the compute power on the CPU in Project Scarlett,” Spencer added. “I/O [input/output] is always an issue. How do we move both memory and bits around? So, we have a 40-times improvement in the I/O speed, [increased] bandwidth for us moving things around on the console [compared to] the past generation. And we’ve upgraded to GDDR6 memory inside of the box to ensure that the memory itself is able to keep up with the CPU, GPU, and the bandwidth requirements.”
With ultra-fast storage and a general setup meant to rival that of high-end gaming PCs, the Series X aims to be much more than just a console. “We’ve invested in NVMe solid-state drives and we’re also giving developers a lot of new capabilities, and on top of that, try to virtually eliminate load times.”
He also mentioned that the Xbox Series X will absolutely be backwards compatible with support for up to 4 generations. Original Xbox, 360, and the Xbox One will all still have a home within the new generation.
At this time, we don’t have a release date yet for the Xbox Series X but we do know that it is slated for the holiday season in 2020. Are you excited?
