Can You Lay the Xbox Series X Down Flat?

Microsoft pulled a major surprise during this year’s The Game Awards showcase by showing off the full design – and name – of the next generation of Xbox. The Xbox Series X boasts insane specs and not only does it perform like a gaming PC, it kind of looks like a PC tower as well. Because of the design choice, many had one question in mind: Can the Xbox Series X lay down flat? 

Can You Lay the Xbox Series X Down Flat | Vertical vs Horizontal 

“The first thing I wanted to say is the [Xbox Series X’s] design works vertical or horizontal, just like the Xbox One S and Xbox One X,” said Xboss Phil Spencer to GameSpot. “We think that it’s not our job to dictate the orientation of our console in your home. That is up to you.”

The Xbox 360 was another system that worked both ways, though later on it was revealed that sitting it straight up could do more harm than good with the system’s fan. Luckily, Spencer and the team had this design question in mind while developing this particular console, making it easy to use it anyway a player sees fit, which is a nice option to have when looking to upgrade that gaming setup. 

He also recently opened up about the specs of the new system to the site. The overall 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?