The general consensus: it’s fast.
Various media have already started using the Xbox Series X and the first impressions are clear: the Xbox Series X is a speed monster.
Time to face the postman tomorrow morning, because our Xbox Series X has clearly been lost in the mail. Other media had better luck, because they have had the Xbox Series X in their living room for a week. Today the first impressions were allowed to be published, as long as they were limited to impressions about backward-compatible games, loading times and quick resume.
Impressive loading times
There are no real next-gen games yet, but there is clearly a lot to be said about the Xbox Series X and its performance. Spoiler: they are – roughly – all good things. The first thing that strikes you – and what is mentioned by every media – is the speed of the device. The system booting only takes a few seconds and starting a game is also significantly faster. Destiny 2 loading takes according to The Verge 43 seconds on the Xbox Series X, while it takes 1m52 on the Xbox One X. You can also see a big difference with Warframe, which loads in 25 seconds on the Xbox Series X and takes 1m31 with the Xbox One X. In some games, the difference in loading times is less pronounced. Call of Duty: Warzone loading on the Xbox Series X takes 16 seconds, while on the Xbox One X it also takes only 16 seconds.
And these are just the results of games that are backwards compatible. It will certainly be interesting to see how first-party titles and XSX optimized titles fare in terms of loading times. Because of those loading times, it is therefore recommended to always install games on the built-in SSD of the Xbox Series X, or on the 1TB expansion card (although you have to pay a hefty 220 euros for that). In fact, games optimized for Xbox Series X are the only way to play them. You can still connect an external hard drive to your system and install games on it, but you should only use that for storage. You can simply transfer games that you do not play (anymore) to the (slow) external hard drive.
Game performance
The Verge notes that the Xbox Series X is also a great console for those who play “old” Xbox One games, because those games clearly also benefit from the Xbox Series X hardware. The example of Destiny 2 is cited. Where with the Xbox One version you could regularly bump into frame drops, the author has not yet discovered any frame drops on the Xbox Series X. It is also much faster to navigate through the menus and to load your equipment, for example. The argument that an Xbox Series X is useless as there are no fully-fledged next-gen games yet, has therefore been officially debunked. Despite that power, it is a quiet console IGN on. Although we don’t know yet how the system will react when running a 4K game at 120fps.
Switch between five games
The promising Quick Resume functionality of the Xbox Series X could also be tested, and was already overwhelmed with praise. With that functionality you can save the state of a game and switch between multiple games. Tom Warren was able to switch between five different games in a flash and pick up from where he left off, even after restarting the Xbox Series X. He does note that it happened once that a certain game would not resume and that the game had to be restarted. However, this is an early version of the Xbox Series X, so it is too early to make a final judgment.
Quick Resume does what is expected of it.
Disappointing beep
Ryan McCaffrey from IGN calls the fact that the ‘touch sound’ of the power key is the same as that of the Xbox One “disappointing”, something I certainly agree with. If you’ve just bought a brand new device worth 500 euros, you don’t want to get a déjà vu to a console from 6 years ago. It also shows what the monstrous device looks like when you put it on its side, and that is clearly not recommended. Upright the console looks quite impressive, but placing the console horizontally loses much of its charm.
In this article
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Xbox Series X
Brand: Xbox
Categories: Console
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