Xbox One X owners thread (1 Viewer)

[Sam Posten]

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/11/...t=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter

https://www.theverge.com/2017/6/11/...ease-date-price-new-console-announced-e3-2017

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/06/xbox-one-x-scorpio/

https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/11/microsoft-xbox-one-x/?sr_source=Twitter

Preorder link is up but not active:
https://www.amazon.com/Xbox-Project...02-20&linkId=c07ef5d503de7bd6774b717c25dd2714

 

[Carlo_M]

Yeah I'm probably going to be a sucker and buy this. Anthem looks like it will be amazing when it's released next Fall.

 

[LeoA]

Original Xbox backwards compatibility is exciting.

Supports original media just like 360 BC does on the XB1, HD rendering will up the visual quality to levels approaching that of many HD remasters (Just check out homebrew PC emulators like Dolphin and what they can do for 3D polygonal releases from this era), Xbox Originals downloads from the 360 are recognized on the XB1, and system link across all three Xbox generations are so far features confirmed to be present.

Crimson Skies is the only title announced so far, but hopefully it's only the first of many.

 

[DavidMiller]

I'll probably by this day one...

 

[Morgan Jolley]

I actually thought MS put on a pretty great show because they did the hardware announcement up front then just showed off a ton of games. However...

1 - Most of the games are timed-exclusives or not exclusive to the Xbox platform.
2 - Everything they showed will play just fine on a regular Xbox One or One S.
3 - $500 for a console upgrade 4 years later is a bit much, especially since they didn't show anything besides pixels and framerates the makes the One X an essential upgrade.
4 - Xbox One X (or, as someone online pointed out, XB:OX) is an obvious but kind of terrible name.

(I should also point out that Sony said the number of PS4 Pro sales they've made since it came out were only like 20% of new PS4 sales and something like half of them were people upgrading from PS4 to Pro. If the same happens to Microsoft with the One X, which might actually be lower because of the higher price, I don't see this thing making a difference in their sales.)

I think the Xbox brand is kind of dead at this point in the generation. If they want to revitalize sales, they need big name exclusive games. And I don't mean Cuphead or Ori 2, I mean like a blockbuster, amazing Halo or something brand new that blows people away. Anthem looks like BioWare's take on Destiny (which does not appeal to me in the least, but I know it's a huge thing for a very large number of gamers), but it's not exclusive to the Xbox platform. It will probably look better on PC.

Its honestly kind of unfortunate that MS learned how to do an E3 conference and design nice hardware just in time to lose the generation. At least the One S is now down to $250, so maybe that will help them.

EDIT: For the folks who want to buy a One X, I'm curious, what about it is enticing? Were there Xbox-exclusive games that you want or is it the ability to have 4K and HDR at 60 fps?

 

[DavidMiller]

For the folks who want to buy a One X, I'm curious, what about it is enticing? Were there Xbox-exclusive games that you want or is it the ability to have 4K and HDR at 60 fps?

Both... Much like the Sony fan boys, Xbox fan boys buys their next console too. I will buy one because I'm running all 4K at home why would I not want the best game experience to go with my best movie experience. Crackdown 3 has been on I have been waiting for, the first two where a blast. I haven't had the time to go through all the E3 coverage yet. So don't have much more then that at this point.

I know everyone on this forum just love bashing everything Microsoft does game console wise. You should however be happy that they have stuck with it or you would still be gaming on your PS2. Having someone push you is a good thing.

 

[Sam Posten]

HDR 4K. Anything else is gravy.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

E3 hasn't really started and there's only been a handful of press conferences. You aren't missing out on much coverage.

If you have the money and you have the setup (4K HDR TV) and you're already an Xbox fan and invested in the ecosystem, then I get why you would buy an Xbox One X. And if I was looking to get into the Xbox ecosystem and had the cash, the One X is clearly the best option. It's agreed that MS bungled the launch of the One, that they've done a pretty terrible job with their first-party releases, and that the cross-platform stuff with PC has weakened the argument for buying an Xbox console when you can play the same games with one purchase on your PC, as well. But their hardware is good (from the console to the controller to even Kinect 2.0) so I can't fault them for that.

Like I said with the PS4 Pro, its sales have been good but not too significant. 20% of all PS4s sold are Pros, and half of those are pre-existing customers who upgraded. So the Pro has only expanded the PS4 user base by 10% of sales (which works out to something like 600-700k sales over the holidays, about 1% of total lifetime PS4 hardware sales, and those people might have bought a regular PS4, anyway, if the Pro wasn't an option). The hardware upgrade option is great for consumers who have the money, but not too big of a deal for the companies making them because of how few they sell. The goal for console makers is to sell software more than hardware, so you want more people with your box under their TV. Re-selling to old customers doesn't help as much as new ones. I don't think MS selling One X consoles to One and One S owners is going to help them all that much.

The thing is, regardless of how good their hardware is and regardless of whether or not the "best versions" of games will be on the One X (unless Sony announces another PS4 hardware revision tonight, which I doubt), nobody is going to buy the darn thing because it's a lot of money and requires you to have already spent a lot of money on a good HT setup. They need great exclusive games and, frankly, they didn't show many. There are probably more top-tier AAA exclusives coming to the PS4 that I could name off the top of my head before even seeing their E3 presser than MS even showed off for Xbox One yesterday.

I guess my comments are more about MS' business decisions rather than how this works out for the consumer. I don't have an Xbox One, but a One S for $250 (wasn't it $400 less than a year ago?) is pretty enticing. If they can include something with the One X, like the Xbox Game Pass subscription for a year or like the 5 best Xbox One games, then it would be a great value.

 

[Morgan Jolley]

EDIT: Accidental double-post, but happen to have something to add, anyway:

http://www.bbc.com/news/av/technology-40244066/e3-2017-where-s-the-vr-on-xbox-one-x

Looks like VR is no longer something Microsoft wants to bring to Xbox One X. I'm wondering if that's because of fragmenting the market (X plays VR whereas One and S won't) or because Microsoft corporate wants to push it more on Win10 PCs as "mixed reality." Bit of a surprise considering last year Scorpio was announced as this amazing VR device.

 

[Carlo_M]

HDR 4K. Anything else is gravy.

Same here (with the understanding that HDR 4K extends to playing UHD discs as well). Over my gaming life I've been a fan boy for: Sega, Nintendo, Atari, Commodore, Apple, Amiga, NEC, Sony, Microsoft. The only reason I don't have a PS4 is their adherence to not supporting UHD disc playback on it. I can't in good conscience spend $400 and still need something else to play my UHD discs. For the bedroom, I use my XBox for nearly everything except cable/sports viewing. UHD? Yes. Gaming? Yes. Youtube? Yes. Netflix? Yes. HBO Go? Yes. It's on nearly all of the time when I'm home.

 

[Sam Posten]

The ONE THING you need to know:
https://www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/comments/6gofai/xbox_one_x_megathread/diru295/

 

[Jeff Cooper]

'Owners thread'. Shouldn't this thread be completely empty?

 

[Carlo_M]

Shhhh...no one tell Jeff how we all already got our hands on one...

 

[Morgan Jolley]

Looking at the chart at the end of this article:

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre...-vs-sony-ps4-pro-4k-specs-games-price-e3-2017

Honestly...the One X doesn't seem THAT much more powerful than the PS4 Pro on paper. It's weird to me that it's launching at $100 more only 1 year later than the Pro. I wouldn't be surprised if the Pro gets a price cut by then, too (possibly before the end of today). Even so, if your interest is in UHD playback while getting access to all of the exclusives for each console, you could go out right now and buy a PS4 and an Xbox One S for the price of an Xbox One X.

EDIT: Kotaku had a good writeup on the One X that showed a comparison, from MS, between the S and X. Minus native 4K/HDR in "every" game for the X, the other things (HDR10, Dolby Atmos, etc.) were identical.

 

[Carlo_M]

Can someone explain memory in these consoles to me? Look at the specs chart in Morgan's link above. It shows CPU, Memory, etc. However coming from the PC building world, I generally understand architecture like this:

• CPU
• RAM (system memory, usually expressed as RAM or SDRAM/DDRAM)
• HDD (or SSD)
• GPU
• Graphics Memory (usually expressed as GDDR, i.e. GDDR5)

Looking at those specs, it seems like there isn't a listing for RAM, and they're listing "Memory" as GDDR5, which again used to be exclusive graphics memory, tied with the GPU. Are these combined now?

Interestingly, when you look at the official XBox One product page on the site, it lists, in addition to the 12GB GDDR5 and 1TB HDD, "8GB Flash Memory". Now normally RAM wouldn't be expressed as Flash Memory. Flash Memory is usually (but not always) tied to storage. But there's the separate 1TB HDD. So what could this Flash Memory be? Is it the traditional RAM? If so does this give it a leg up on its competitors? Or are the others just not listing RAM either, but it's in the PS4/Pro in addition to the GDDR5?

If it's not RAM in the traditional sense, and it's not part of the traditional HDD (i.e. a fusion drive), then I'm kind of hoping the system OS will be stored on there permanently so we have near instantaneous boot up.

Thoughts on what that 8GB Flash Memory represents? Are traditional RAM specs no longer part of current gen consoles?

 

[Carlo_M]

Looking at the chart at the end of this article:

https://www.theverge.com/circuitbre...-vs-sony-ps4-pro-4k-specs-games-price-e3-2017

Honestly...the One X doesn't seem THAT much more powerful than the PS4 Pro on paper. It's weird to me that it's launching at $100 more only 1 year later than the Pro. I wouldn't be surprised if the Pro gets a price cut by then, too (possibly before the end of today). Even so, if your interest is in UHD playback while getting access to all of the exclusives for each console, you could go out right now and buy a PS4 and an Xbox One S for the price of an Xbox One X.

EDIT: Kotaku had a good writeup on the One X that showed a comparison, from MS, between the S and X. Minus native 4K/HDR in "every" game for the X, the other things (HDR10, Dolby Atmos, etc.) were identical.

Already have an S which will be moved to the other room once the X is purchased. But I can't reward a company that could easily have included a UHD drive but chose not to. The added cost would have been relatively little, especially since Sony makes UHD players.

 

[CraigF]

It is fairly common now for flash memory to be kind of lumped in with RAM in an overall memory specification in stand-alone/specific-purpose devices. Consider the flash to be the equivalent to SSD in PC terms. It might be expressed as 4+16GB or something like that, with the 4 being RAM and the 16 being flash.

Yes, the flash is usually used for stuff you don't change regularly, like system, apps/games, "permanent" data (setup etc.). The flash is usually faster than external storage devices and HDD due to its closer coupling to the CPU, but not nearly as fast as RAM of course.

[Most devices I have warn you to not use the flash as general-purpose everyday storage, as because it's built in, your whole device is essentially toast if/when the flash wears out. As opposed to just tossing out a USB stick. (I actually have an all-region BDP I had to retire just because the *built-in* BUDA is worn out, and it won't boot when it detects the built-in BUDA/flash is flaky, regardless of any "external" BUDA installed.) Flash lasts longer than it used to of course, but an SSD has a certain redundancy and algorithms to take care of it that a flash chip doesn't have, so not quite the same comparison.]

 

[DavidMiller]

Can someone explain memory in these consoles to me? Look at the specs chart in Morgan's link above. It shows CPU, Memory, etc. However coming from the PC building world, I generally understand architecture like this:

• CPU
• RAM (system memory, usually expressed as RAM or SDRAM/DDRAM)
• HDD (or SSD)
• GPU
• Graphics Memory (usually expressed as GDDR, i.e. GDDR5)

Thoughts on what that 8GB Flash Memory represents? Are traditional RAM specs no longer part of current gen consoles?

These are GPU only systems they don't need the traditional work loads that CPUs offer. They are all about graphics power. Hence you don't see the traditional RAM/CPU callouts. The flash memory is the buffer because the storage systems are usually slow 5200rpm. So to keep up with the feeding of the data they use Flash memory. This is my understanding of console architecture.

 

[Tino]

Already have an S which will be moved to the other room once the X is purchased. But I can't reward a company that could easily have included a UHD drive but chose not to. The added cost would have been relatively little, especially since Sony makes UHD players.

Exactly!

 

[Carlo_M]

Interesting about the GDDR5 memory kind of acting as total system memory. Makes sense. Then I'm real curious about the 8GB Flash Mem. It's nowhere near large enough to even hold one "real" game (those go from 30-60GB and higher). So if the GDDR5 is really acting as an all-in-one memory, and the 1TB HDD is for storing games, I really do hope they store the entire OS in the Flash Mem. Usually when I see the XBox OS update it's less than 2GB IIRC, so it should all fit comfortably. I'm definitely all about increased launch times. It pains me that the XBox (and most gaming consoles) take longer to start up than my Macbook Pro.

 

[Sam Posten]

Not if you put them in power saving mode...