Day 1 Xbox Series X Review

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PhaseDMA
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Day 1 Xbox Series X Review

Post by PhaseDMA »

For anyone that cares, here is a day 1 review of the Xbox Series X.

First I want to start with the controller. Yep. The controller. It's the same. That's the first thing you need to know. The second thing you need to know is it's not the same. Yep. When you pick up the controller it is instantly recognizable. Yet better. First the weight -There is with question a difference in weight, yet I can't for the life of me figure out which one weighs more. I'm sure the difference is less than 2 tenths of a pound. It's so trivial, it really doesn't matter unless you are looking for the difference, and even than it doesn't.

The first thing you will notice is it bites into your hand. Not in a bad way. In a very good way. The last gen controller was glossy and plasticy. This one is textured, and not glossy. Even in the not textured areas, the next gen controller has a grit to it where the previous gen was slippery - seemingly by design.

The buttons are all in the same place though. But lets talk about buttons. The triggers now have a texture (as does the underside - which I failed to mention previously). They however have the same amount of tension as the last gen. Lets be honest. You need tension in games. Think racing games where you don't want all or nothing. The bumpers though? An entirely different story. Again, the bumpers have more a of a bite compared to last gen, but they are also more responsive. They have less travel.

The long and short is, this controller is the same as the previous gen. Except it somehow managed to make some minor, yet major quality of life changes.

And that leads me to what I believe this generation is going to be all about - Quality of life. Sure, you will get some insane performance improvements, but at least with Microsoft and Xbox, it is all about making things as comfortable as possible.

As far as the console goes. First you ?have? to setup the console with the Xbox app. This is extremely stupid, and it seemed to work 75% of the way. It's hard to tell where day one issues were the probleme, and where real problems got in the way. Ultimately - I *think* this can all be done on the console. If it worked perfectly this would be a fun day one setup distraction. Any other day? Probably a terrible idea.

I tried to do a console to console transfer of my games. Long story short it was a disaster. But in hindsight I ****ENTIRELY**** blame my network and/or router. I was pulling 1 MB/s speeds when I tried to transfer over the network. When I tried to download I got as high as 225 MB/s. Yeah.... That's a problem to be solved for another time.

How fast is this? Well. First of all don't blink. I may not be the most objective, because I have and OG Xbox One with it's disaster of a mechanical hard drive - But the Series X is blistering! At one point today I turned it on - knowing very well it was fast - and the thing I kid you not was on before I knew what was going on. We are talking speeds we have not seen since the cartridge days.

Lets talk about loading old games. Suffice to say those title screen moments that are supposed to mask loading screens? They hardly complete before we get to the next screen. Specifically The Division 2 has a screen warning about seizures and whatever... That thing would be gone in half the time, but very clearly has a set timer on it. It's insane. Madden (last years) can hardly display it's loading screen for 1 second before it pop you into the actual game.

Now lets be clear. So many games now are "always on". And this can throw a serious wrench into quick resume. But if a always online game hasn't hit it's network timeout amount, you can pretty much jump into and out of these games as you see fit. I have not been able to stress the quick resume, because I don't have enough games on the system yet, but reports are that you can have 5 games in quick resume. I've actually heard you can get up to 6. Which even on the low end is insane considering the Xbox One often times had issues past one active game.

Let's talk about 4k.

So as I said, my Xbox One is an OG unit. So it doesn't have 4k.

That said... I played Madden. Which to me shouldn't matter going from 1080p to 4k. Let me assure you - It absolutely makes a difference. This isn't a looking for minor detail changes. The game fundamentally looks better.

I can't really make a fair comparison between the One X and Series X, because I don't have the experience, but obviously the status quo is you are going to get the same or better picture, and a high frame rate. Remember - A lot of games are locked to 30 FPS on the One X. Again I can't speak to this, but I've heard of 6k stuff being downscaled to 4k (because who has a 8k or even 6k display) on the Series X.

Again. This console is very much "quality of life". But at least from my perspective coming from an OG Xbox One to a Series X. Wow. Just wow.

Buy this console. Sell your old Xbox. The Series X is worth every penny of $400 (assuming you sell your old console for a steal at $100).

And if you don't have a 4k TV and don't want to buy one? I have not touched the Series S, but it is blatantly clear the same applies. Sell your old console and upgrade. The speeds, and controller will be the same.

Now let me preface all these speed discussion with one point. A lot of people seem to think these speeds are here to stay. I don't. As games become more advanced, these insane loading speeds are going to become less insane. I do think loading times are in general going to be better, but the idea they are going to *stay away* to me is a fantasy.

I'd say I know first hand. I've witnessed the Xbox dashboard become a disaster with it's ever slowing speeds. Except I've also witnessed that same dashboard on that same console become exponentially better. To be clear, the Xbox One dashboard from a year ago is a piece of garbage compared to the Xbox One AND Series X dashboard of today. So really I would say we have to hold M$ responsible - Good luck, even from the more consumer friendly console company, it can at times be anti consumer.
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My MPG sucks cause' I remote start all the time - And than drive 2 miles to work
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kryptonite
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Re: Day 1 Xbox Series X Review

Post by kryptonite »

Hypothetically...if I were to buy one to mainly use as a streaming device and Blu-Ray player with maybe occasionally playing some NHL/NFL type games (and mayyyybe some other stuff)...

Should I go PS or XBOX? I think I heard XBOX was the better all-around machine.

I'm probably going to wait until next summer or so anyway once bugs get worked out, updates happen and maybe (not likely) a price drop...or even a bundle package... something maybe better than the "one controller and no games" or whatever the current offer is if you're lucky enough to buy one at retail.

So yeah, it'd need a disc drive.

Or, would it be better to buy the now-old model, knowing that games are going to be on short supply.

And yes, I'm aware of places like GameStop, but I also have a Best Buy gift card that I eventually need to spend.

I say all this, as I've said for the past many generations. The last games I regularly played were PS2. Yeah, it stinks those games won't work on PS5, but I could definitely dig up some XBox 360 and maybe XBox One games.
PhaseDMA
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Re: Day 1 Xbox Series X Review

Post by PhaseDMA »

It's hard to say how long last gen will be supported, but regardless, sports games will if history is any indication, be the last to stop making new games. From a strictly backwards compatibility standpoint, the Xbox Series X/S goes all the way back to the original Xbox - to be clear the OG is supported in a limited way, but I suspect anything people really want to play is there. As far as the 360 you lose all Kinect support, but that's about the extent of it. The Series supports all XBO games - the active XBO games should all receive enhancements.

The PS5 seems to be a lot more dubious on backward compatability. Apparently it supports all PS4 games. But that's it. If you want an older system you will have to hope it is in their online store (which it probably is, but a ps2 disk won't do you any good).

If what you have is currently enough, there really is no reason to buy today. I have to imagine that there will be zero next gen exclusive games for the first year. To be clear there WILL be performance issues on last gen, but those systems will at least get you into the party.

Honestly you should buy whichever system your friends are going to end up with. Or if you don't care about that, the controller you prefer. There really isn't that much between them.

I prefer the dashboard on the Xbox. It's the reason I never bought a PS4 (yes, 100% serious). The PS5 has improved, but I don't think it has hit primetime yet.

This probably won't factor for you, but to me the killer feature is quick resume on Series X. It's a bit buggy, but when it's working (90% of the time) you can jump in and out of games almost instantaneous. I'm. Not talking about main menus, I'm talking about playing a down in Madden, jumping into the middle of a fight in CoD campaign (for obvious reasons online sessions will typically drop you into a main menu) and then right back into 3rd and 3 in Madden. As of this point PlayStation has no answer for this.

Here is the bottom line. I keep telling people. This is a quality of life generation. Nothing insane is going to happen. Controllers are going to improve. The GUI is going to improve on the hardware. Loading times (initially - I don't think it's sustainable) are going to be cut in half. Fast travel? That's finally a 2 second reality instead of 20+ seconds. Some games legit can't get the mandatory loading screen up before the game is done loading (like in Forza when switching cars).

So... If you don't have 4K yet (but have the TV) get an upgrade. If you don't have a SSD get an upgrade. Aside from that... Wait until it makes for an easy financial decision. You have a solid 13+ months before this current generation leaves you stranded in last gen - because don't be confused, Xbox One and PS4 are still current gen - Series X/S are still next gen.
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My MPG sucks cause' I remote start all the time - And than drive 2 miles to work
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