Today at the 2019 Game Awards in Los Angeles, Microsoft finally dropped the curtain on next year’s new Xbox console (previously “Project Scarlett”) called Xbox Series X (they must really love the letter X), and the console is like no other.
The new design (reveal trailer located below) looks like something you’d find from a company like Razer, or maybe slightly influenced by Apple’s Trash Can (I mean, Mac Pro) computer (only much cooler by all definitions of cool). It can stand both vertically or horizontally like the systems before it, but this time it looks like a rectangular tower or box. A design that we haven’t quite seen yet in a gaming console (unless you chop it in half and call it a GameCube), said to be about three times the height of the Xbox controller.
It packs what Microsoft promises to be killer performance capabilities that climb as high as four times (4x) the performance of the Xbox One X console. It will run quiet, cool(er), and features some powerful custom processing based on AMD Zen 2 architecture. Built around the mission of delivering outstanding 8K content to all of your favorite video games and media, up to 120 frames per second.
It will feature an NVMe SSD to deliver any transfer speed a game could ever ask for with modern technology and it will (thankfully) still have a disc drive. The latter is important for backward compatibility! Especially since this should hopefully have (so far) the best backward compatibility support seen in any system. Of course, it won’t be long before they will launch an all-digital version of this console too.
We do know that the “Series X” in the name is simply the model number, and that the official title of the new series is simply “Xbox”. This allows them fresh naming rights for future consoles, and hopefully an end to the random branding with each major launch (Xbox, 360, One, etc). Now, maybe we will see Xbox 2, Xbox 3 and so forth, as new generations release. For now, they can replace “Series X” with other variations within the new generation, which will likely be similar to what we have seen with the Xbox One. So chances are, we will see an Xbox Series S or something close to that for more affordable cut-down versions of the console within a year or so after the launch of the Series X model. One variation will absolutely be an “all-digital” version for sure (for less serious gamers who don’t need backwards compatibility with older discs).
No hard date has been set just yet, so all we have is the 2020 holiday season for now. More specs and juicy details will (of course) eventually leak out as we get closer. For now, check out their reveal trailer below!
They are already working on some exclusive titles to draw you in with, including “Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2” that features some jaw-dropping graphics and excellent atmospherical effects. As you can see in the below trailer for the game, you can really feel the evil flowing off of the character. All of these graphics are rendered in real-time (not a video) within the game. An excellent demo for the new console’s capabilities.
(Updated 12/17/2019)
