Select members of the gaming press just spent a week with the Xbox Series X. Everyone played on a preview build so not everything is final. That said, the general consensus is that the machine is a giant upgrade. This is all based on how it runs Xbox One and Xbox 360 games, though. The upcoming games aren’t quite ready so we won’t know how they run until later.
Games like Grand Theft Auto IV run at a super consistent 60 FPS. Red Dead Redemption 2 went from a 2 minute and 8 seconds load time to a mere 38 seconds. The UI is slick, smooth, and never has to stop and think about what you’re telling it to do. It’s so unbelievably fast and that sold me on the Xbox Series X, personally.
This is all thanks to the console’s SSD which allows for faster performance across the board. We’ve rounded up some impressions so you can get an idea of what people think of the console.
Jeff Grubb – GamesBeat
“Microsoft designed the Xbox Series X to address the shortcomings that developers and gamers have had to deal with since 2013. The weak CPU that has held back world design and simulation complexity. The old laptop-style hard drives that slowed down the interface and the games. And the I/O architecture that would bottleneck even an internal SSD. All of that is why I veered so hard into PC gaming in 2015, and I’m hoping that the launch of the Xbox Series X will enable us to bury those tired old machines.
This is the console we should’ve had years ago, and I’m so ready for it.”
Michael Higham – GameSpot
“For this phase of the preview period, I want to stress how refreshing it was to have such fast, snappy loading for console games, and to have Quick Resume changing the way I can jump from one game to another and get more out of my time playing. I’ve said this before, but I feel like next-gen console gaming will be greatly impacted by those practical improvements in the user experience more so than higher visual fidelity–and that’s what I’ve been most impressed with in the Xbox Series X so far.”
Tom Warren – The Verge
“… the Xbox Series X felt like I was playing on a familiar Xbox that’s a lot faster and more capable.”
The experience of switching back to an Xbox One was genuinely dispiriting. For running my existing Xbox games, the Series X feels like I’ve just upgraded my iPhone— everything feels smoother and faster. These games aren’t even optimized for the console and they’re already running better, so I’m excited to see what truly optimized games will offer in the coming weeks.”
“The true next generation of games is still a mystery, but what I’ve seen from backward-compatible games over the past week is encouraging. I’m hoping that game developers will have a lot fewer bottlenecks with both the Xbox Series X and PS5, enabling them to deliver some game improvements we’re only used to seeing over on the PC side.”
Ryan McCaffery – IGN
“In conclusion, though I’m still waiting to play a proper next-gen game that takes full advantage of the Xbox Series X (stay tuned for coverage on that), it’s clear that your back catalog will get a boost from the new console regardless of whether or not your favorite game has received any specific Series X optimizations. In fact, the SSD spoils you pretty quickly. I already never want to see my Xbox One X ever again.”
Richard Leadbetter – Digital Foundry
“But that’s where I am with Xbox Series X backwards compatibility – and I’m hugely impressed by the results. The boost to system performance compared to Xbox One X is clearly tremendous and I’m liking Microsoft’s commitment to the Xbox library and putting so much resource into producing results like the ones I’ve detailed today.”
The Xbox Series X releases on November 10th, 2020 with reviews coming shortly prior to that. A cheaper yet weaker Xbox will also release that same day.
