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XBox (Games) Microsoft Entertainment Games Hardware Technology The 2000 Beanies

Microsoft's Next Xbox Is Xbox Series X, Coming Holiday 2020 (theverge.com) 78

At the 2019 Game Awards today, Microsoft revealed the name and console design of its next-generation gaming console: Xbox Series X. The Verge reports: The console itself looks far more like a PC than we've seen from previous Xbox consoles, and Microsoft's trailer provides a brief glimpse at the new design. The console itself is designed to be used in both vertical and horizontal orientations, and Microsoft's Xbox chief, Phil Spencer, promises that it will "deliver four times the processing power of Xbox One X in the most quiet and efficient way."

The Xbox Series X will include a custom-designed CPU based on AMD's Zen 2 and Radeon RDNA architecture. Microsoft is also using an SSD on Xbox Series X, which promises to boost load times. Xbox Series X will also support 8K gaming, frame rates of up to 120 fps in games, ray tracing, and variable refresh rate support. Microsoft also revealed a new Xbox Wireless Controller today. "Its size and shape have been refined to accommodate an even wider range of people, and it also features a new Share button to make capturing screenshots and game clips simple," explains Spencer. This updated controller will work with existing Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 PCs, and will ship with every Xbox Series X.

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Microsoft's Next Xbox Is Xbox Series X, Coming Holiday 2020

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  • Pull the other one

    • They just said that they'd support it, not that you'd actually get it. The 120 FPS isn't happening either outside of a few indie titles that don't really tax the hardware.

      I think the biggest deal is the variable refresh rate support.
      • The XBox One X's GPU is roughly equivalent to an RX 580. Tight optimizations can get it to hang with a GTX 1070.

        Going by that I would expect the next Xbox to be on par with a 5700 XT in raw performance and bumping up against a stock GTX 2070 after console specific optimizations.

        The question is will you get 1080p/120fps as an option or will devs just opt for 4k/60 with dynamic resolution scaling to smooth out. Some of the lower end e-sports stuff like Overwatch though will probably push 4k/120 with ma
        • Hmmm, I'm guessing more like 8k at full 120fps for multiplayer tic tad toe and super pong 2020. They always publish fantasy specs for consoles, anyway. It'll take 2-3 years before devs learn to optimize for the new system to see real performance. First gen games will look just like last Ben games from the previous console. This applies to Xbox, play station, wii, and every console in the future yet to be imagined by someone not even born yet.
          • let alone 8k/120, but 1440p/120 is definitely a go and 4k/120 with dynamic resolution (e.g. it'll drop as low as 1080p at times) isn't outside the realm of possibility.
            • I wonder how many can even tell the difference between 120 and 60. I suspect higher resolution at 60 is a better experience for most games than lower at 120. Really, though, this is all bullshit until new games come out. Playing old games on a new system won't improve them any. I need to see if it's possible to install a dos emulator on my 4K tv so I can play Masters of Orion on it.
          • all that the 8k 120fps means is that it has display output bw to make up for it.

            even if you couldn't hit the 120fps all the time you would want to keep it at that so that if you miss it your fps doesn't drop to 30.

    • Most recent video cards can do 8K out of the box.
    • by sad_ ( 7868 )

      probably will be much like 4k support in the current gen, which is not really 4k, just upscaled.

  • How many focus groups did it take to come up with that brilliant name?

  • It might seem silly, but i have seriously been waiting for this. I know , some of you will say " but a mass market product based on something that barely even exist? is that wise?" And to those nay sayer's I have only this to say : don't be short sighted , almost 4% of the market are already using 4k, so it makes perfect sense. It's only a sheer matter of the consoles entire lifespan that will separate it, from the nearly marginal market adoption of 4K , so why not 8k? There are at least 34 people out ther

    • by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Thursday December 12, 2019 @11:13PM (#59514988)
      8K? What a peasant resolution. I'm personally holding out for 640K. I think that ought to be enough for anyone.
      • 8K? What a peasant resolution. I'm personally holding out for 640K. I think that ought to be enough for anyone.

        Right? I get more out of paying for holiday than these systems. At this point, who's savoring the games? Like Halo, I remember playing that four years before another system came out. Didn't they just release XBOne?

    • by jaa101 ( 627731 )

      FullHD, AKA 2K, was designed to be viewed at 3 times the screen height, for those with 20:20 vision. Say you're a young, eagle-eyed gamer with 20:15 vision and call it 4 times the screen height. We're more familiar with screen diagonal sizes which, for 16:9 screens, are double the screen height. Taking full advantage of 2K content then means sitting no farther than 2 times the screen diagonal from the screen.

      Now we move up to 4K and we need to sit within 1 screen diagonal to see all the detail on offer.

      • by Anonymous Coward

        FullHD aka 1080P is NOT 2K.

        2K means 2000 pixels in the horizontal which 1080P does not have.

        Many people get 4K wrong too. 4K is 4096x2160. 3840x2160 is UHD-1. Most certainly not 4K.

        " 8K only has any benefit if you want to sit closer to your screen than that"

        The average tv screen size is getting bigger though. Bigger screens need bigger resolutions or they look more pixelated. You can argue theres not much movie/tv content in that res though. Even games will struggle to run at that res for a long while.

      • by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
        There are people that will always claim they can see the difference in 4K/8K/etc because higher numbers equals better than and they couldn't possibly be wasting money.
      • The image you see is heavily processed by the brain so the it is disconnected by the limits of what your retina can physically manage. To give you an example, "ghosting" is not something that is physically happening on the display, it happens when the brains predicted movement of an object doesn't match what is being shown on screen. In all likelihood one can't really see all of the 4K pixels being displayed on the screen but that doesn't tell the whole story. Until they can figure out a display technolog
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Which holiday? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Zaelath ( 2588189 ) on Thursday December 12, 2019 @10:32PM (#59514908)

    Is that some shit way of saying Christmas now? Why not "December"?

  • past what the human eye can see? Maybe if you're on a 70" TV....
    • I'm on 85" 4K tv. You have to put your face way too close to it if you want to see a pixel. I guess 8k is bigger than 4K but not sure if anyone could really tell the difference. I think true colors, anti-ghosting/artifacting, and such are more important now. 8k prices were 5x 4K prices for same size when I got my tv. Uhm.... no. Just no. Think of how many $1k phones I could buy for the difference!
      • Yep - resolution isn't everything. Put it this way: a live action filmed sequence would be more impressive at SD resolution than the original Quake would running at 8K. Higher resolution HELPS with certain things like pixelation, but there is a whole lot more to creating a high quality image.

    • No, it is not past what the eye can see.

      Our vision is still able to determine the difference in the fidelity of a higher and lower resolution image even if your visual acuity is not good enough to perceive the individual pixels themselves. The reason for this being is that you now have 4 pixels involved in the rendering of an image instead of 1 if your competing resolutions are adjacent to each by the power of 2. This will alter the image in subtle ways that will definitely add a different quality to a hi

      • by jaa101 ( 627731 )

        Our vision is still able to determine the difference in the fidelity of a higher and lower resolution image even if your visual acuity is not good enough to perceive the individual pixels themselves.

        This is wrong.

        The reason for this being is that you now have 4 pixels involved in the rendering of an image instead of 1 if your competing resolutions are adjacent to each by the power of 2. This will alter the image in subtle ways that will definitely add a different quality to a high resolution image vs the lower one.

        So just render at double the display's resolution and use a good down-sampling algorithm. No need to actually display all those extra pixels.

        • Or just give us the choice between 4K super sampling and 8k native? There are always people who claim you don't need X and others who claim they can tell the difference between X and not X and if it's cheap to accommodate both, then that's what you should do instead of just making one group unhappy.

          High refresh rates are more interesting to me anyway. Unfortunately not many TVs support higher than 60 so it will be a while before ordinary people have them by default and this is something that provides a comp

    • by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Friday December 13, 2019 @12:04AM (#59515052)

      8K still isn't enough for Frank's 2000" TV.

    • 8k is dum. The only good thing about it is the manufacturers will gouge the shit out of prices on 8k TVs and this will make 4k TVs even cheaper. I'm still rocking a 65"1080p Panasonic plasma. I will probably move to a 75" OLED next year, or maybe just LED if I get scared of burn-in.
  • What's next? The Xbox X Mark Z Series X version XZ?

  • by indy_Muad'Dib ( 869913 ) on Friday December 13, 2019 @12:12AM (#59515066) Homepage

    few more generations and we can have the xX_XboX_Xx and it the systems name will match its customers typical usernames

  • Xbox chief: “Nobody’s asking for VR” for Project Scarlett

    Spencer's numbers aren't totally accurate there. Sony announced back in March that PlayStation VR has sold 4.2 million units since its 2016 launch. And analysis firm Superdata estimated an install base of 14 million VR users in 2018 across all platforms, a number it projects will grow to 51 million by 2022.

    https://arstechnica.com/gaming... [arstechnica.com]

    • by fenrif ( 991024 )

      Better than last generation's

      Xbox chief: "No one wants to own their games any more. No one wants to trade games any more. No one wants any exclusive new games. And everyone, absolutely everyone, wants an always-on recording device from last generation which increases the cost of the device by $100 and is basically useless for gaming!"

      • by diems ( 6396892 )

        And two generations before then, microsoft talking about the original xbox: "the xbox has toy story level graphics!!"

    • by EvilSS ( 557649 )

      Sony announced back in March that PlayStation VR has sold 4.2 million units since its 2016 launch

      So, under 4% of their install base. And how many people actually use it a few months after they buy it vs have it sitting collecting dust?

      grow to 51 million by 2022

      Is that the year that Bridge Buying Simulator releases on VR?

  • by Lanthanide ( 4982283 ) on Friday December 13, 2019 @03:12AM (#59515242)

    Not sure if this is better or worse than the xbone.

  • "Its size and shape have been refined to accommodate an even wider range of people,.."
  • Just wondering if its designers were inspired by that iconic black cube-shaped machine?

    Could have made it a bit shorter and call it the XCube or something.

  • Is this still just a massively overused weasel word, or have finally come to the point where somebody actually celebrates "Holiday"?
  • So I can say "X" 50 times since I love saying "X" almost as much as I like saying mukluks.

  • The current Xbox One X is a mid level performance system. Which is fine for the majority of those interested in that sort of thing. The push to keep pace with the PC, and provide some sort of value of scale for those who stubbornly refuse (like me) to upgrade their hardware is not going to change the gaming landscape that much. 8K just doesn't seem like anything worth building to until there is a game that could really use it well. Sort of like what ray tracing is to the high performance NVIDIA cards th
    • Ray tracing is way easier to find use cases for than 8k. I've got an RTX2070 and Modern Warfare looked absolutely amazing. The lighting effects looked real. Ray tracing is here. 8k...not so much.

  • Good work Micorsoft! This thing will not fit into my stereo/console rack. So I will be getting a PS5 because this form factor is not logical at all for a good chunk of gamers setup. Am I the only one that has a TV on top of a TV stand and there are shelves below the TV to store things like consoles?

    • by dstyle5 ( 702493 )
      I've found Microsoft's cooling designs to be much better than Sony's jet engine sounding PS4s. They have obviously learned their lesson from the 360 debacle, meanwhile Sony is designing their consoles cooling systems poorly. With Ryzen and Navi in both consoles, they are going to be running very warm, so hopefully Sony does a better job with the PS5 regarding cooling it. My Xbox One X can be a bit loud at times but nothing like Sony's gong show cooling sounds.
  • The console itself looks far more like a PC than we've seen from previous Xbox consoles

    No, it doesn't. The original Xbox looks more like a PC than this thing, which looks like a square take on the trashcan Mac Pro. There have been a whole bunch of PCs that looked a lot like the original Xbox.

  • If Microsoft would sell it with Linux on the bare metal then I would likely buy it. It will be quiet and low-power, and it would fit nicely where I want to use it. They can take out the optical drive and sell it to me for the same price. I realize that there's approximately zero chance that this will happen, but anyway.

  • I'm don't think Alan Watts would be too happy about someone using his lectures to sell escapist consumerism.

  • You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile.
  • Xbox
    Xbox 360
    Xbox One
    Xbox One X
    Xbox Series X

    Jesus. I would make a joke, but I would feel guilty, like I had knowingly made fun of the schoolwork of a mentally retarded child.

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