A Sidebar that Highlights Game Pass and the Microsoft Store Entertainment Apps

The Xbox button still brings up the guide and that brings up a side panel over whatever else you're doing, which easily lets you go home or go to your game library. None of this is a big change but it's tried true tested and most importantly fast, fans of the Xbox will feel right at home. And for those who are making the move from PC, it's somewhat reminiscent of Windows 10 Start Menu.

One new feature that I didn't know how much I would love was Quick Resume, this feature lets you swap between games that are in suspended states so these games are just stored directly in the memory and you only have to wait a few seconds to swap back to exactly where you were. Sure, you should always save your progress but this can keep you from having to go through start menus and loading data just to switch between games and not every game I tried supported Quick Resume so I did sometimes find myself back at the start screen of a game when I didn't expect it.

But knowing that most games going forward are going to support this feature as exciting, I was able to switch between several at a time like The Tourist, Halo, The Master Chief Collection, Marvel's Avengers, and Gears 5. And to wait maybe 30 seconds give or take to be in the exact spot I was in no menus or further loading required.

If there's a streaming service that you subscribe to, it's probably on the Xbox Series X. You've got Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Vudu, Showtime, YouTube, and YouTube TV. Peacock is also joining at launch marking a significant new entry. And some like HBO Max are a bit buried in the store but don't worry they're there.

For music, you've got Spotify and Prime Music as well as Deezer and Pandora. Title however is not in the Microsoft Store at the moment and for watching streams Twitch is in the store though the Microsoft Store does have some off-brand viewers that you might want to skip at launch.

Microsoft is listing 30 games that are optimized for the Series X and those include Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Sea of Thieves, Watchdogs: Legion, Dirt 5, Forza Horizon 4, NBA 2K21, and more. And of those the majority support Smart Delivery which will let you buy a game on Xbox One and play it across generations with the Xbox Series X or Series S.

Since none of these are exclusives it also means that you could hold off right now if you don't need the latest and greatest hardware and there are more games coming soon like versions of Borderlands 3 and Call of Duty: Black Ops Called War. But a lot of games are also still in production. There are exclusives coming with the notable one being The Medium which will also be on PC in December.

Halo Infinite arguably the real system seller here has been delayed until 2021 but meanwhile you could still play over a hundred games on Game Pass and Game Pass is the future of Xbox. You may not buy the Series S for the Series X but it all works on PC and this subscription is what Microsoft wants you to subscribe to possibly more so than the hardware.

The Xbox Series X is a strong opening argument for a future filled with choice for gamers. It's the most powerful option in a lineup with two price points and levels of power it utilizes a service and game pass that lets you play over 100 games on the hardware your PC or even stream to an Android phone or you can just keep buying your own games on disk or digitally and run them on a quiet powerful gaming platform. It also gives you the choice to play almost any game from four different generations of Xbox and any peripheral from the last one.

Microsoft has the looks to compete here as well as in power and in the entertainment center with a mature understated design even if it's a different shape than you might expect it. And if only it had a USB Type-C port out of the gate its biggest weakness may be a lack of console exclusives. Sony will be launching the PlayStation 5 with Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Demon Souls, Sackboy A Big Adventure, Bug Snacks, and more but a wide array of third-party titles should provide plenty to play in the coming months.

It also means that you likely don't need to spring for the Series X immediately as those games are also coming to last gen consoles like the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 but the Series X also delivers more raw power at least on paper and we'll have to wait to see how developers take advantage of it. The Xbox is clearly modernized as it stands, the engineering is impressive, the offerings provide plenty of choice and the games look and play well.

This is Xbox refined

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: ennext gen console gaming is about power but the xbox series x is also seemingly about empowerment the system with its 8 core 16 thread cpu and amd rdna 2 based gpu is on paper the most powerful console ever it's here and it's time for the review let's just say the xbox series x makes a powerful first impression even if you don't need one right away this is industrial design that i can get behind at just over 11 inches tall it's quite a different shape from other consoles coming closer to small pc designs like the corsair one on the front of the xbox series x there's a 4k blu-ray drive and a single usb 3.1 type a port the rest of the ports are relegated to the back and include two more usb type a ports an ethernet jack and a connector for the power cable as well as the hdmi output and the slot for xbox's new custom external ssds there's no hdmi input here microsoft and the xbox team have positioned the series x as being all about gaming you can lay the xbox series x down sideways on four small feet on its right side the bottom mounted stand is permanently attached to the system though so even when you lay it down it's small but and not all that distracting my favorite part of the design is actually the air holes on the top there's a 12 by 12 grid of holes cut into the chassis to release air and these holes are painted green on the inside so that when you approach the xbox you start to see a green circle reminiscent of the original xbox even if the system's off it's a cool effect that makes the series x feel more like a living room centerpiece than just the piece of tech the xbox series x boasts an eight core 16 thread cpu based on amd's zen 2 architecture at 7 nanometer as well as a gpu baked with amd's rdna 2 silicon with 52 compute units the dram is also on the soc with 16 gigabytes of gddr6 memory the gpu allows for hardware ray tracing support though we haven't seen a ton of software in time for this review that truly makes a huge use case for it like traditional pc gaming it's still used with a mix of traditional rasterization in theory the system on a chip supports 4k 120hz output though that will depend on the monitor you use and that the game itself supports it elsewhere on the xbox series x's split motherboard is the ssd storage a part of what microsoft calls the velocity architecture with 2.4 gigabytes per second of i o throughput this is what allows for faster load speeds that finally get on the level that pc gaming has been on for years as well as allowing for features like quick resume to suspend and resume multiple games at once one interesting spec to note is that the xbox series x is using wi-fi five it's not upgrading to wi-fi six which is unfortunate because that would really future-proof this device with upcoming routers over the course of reviewing the xbox series x we got to play a number of games some of them like gears 5 the tourist forza horizon 4 and gears tactics had already been optimized for the system while others like marvel's the avengers or madden nfl 2k21 were the xbox one versions of the game but will have optimization soon some of those games like the versus mode in gears 5 support 4k 120 in theory the xbox series x uses hdmi 2.1 which is largely relegated as of this moment to a few tvs and even fewer monitors for us 4k 60 was still the limit and i imagine that will be the case for most people for the immediate future still games play great on the xbox series x and it doesn't take much much of a trained eye to tell the difference between 30 and 60 frames per second and any game that could take advantage of that did and because backwards compatibility is almost entirely there minus a few connect games i was even able to go and download a freebie from the xbox 360 days ages wing to my library and it just worked as i remembered it of course the performance of the series x will likely be pushed more to its max in time as we've seen with just about every console generation developers tend to get better at optimizing for these platforms still if you're an xbox fan who plays current previous gen games they will run best here it's quite difficult to run something like a traditional benchmark on a console but there are metrics to give you a pretty good idea of how powerful a system is those include heat power and noise so during a race in the version of forza horizon 4 optimized for the series x we saw a peak of 169.2 watts being pulled to the system in gears 5 another optimized game it peaked at 192 watts in a backwards compatible game halo the master chief collection the system pulled a peak of 148.1 watts when the system is at idle it typically pulls around 41.3 watts and with the system asleep it runs around 11.7 watts and you could bring that down by putting it in energy saver mode though you would lose some features the xbox series x uses a single fan at the top of the system to bring air through the bottom of the system and this is part of what microsoft calls its parallel cooling architecture with three airflow channels a sizable heat sink over the chip a vapor chamber and a split motherboard the ram cpu and gpu are on one side and the i o is on the reverse in any case the system was effectively silent we measured ambient sound in our test lab at 35.3 decibels and with the system idle the sound meter measured it at the same thing 35.3 decibels while racing in forza horizon 4 it ranged from 35.4 to 37 decibels so i'm extremely impressed with what microsoft has done with the cooling system to keep it this quiet we also took images of the xbox series x through a flare camera and the hottest point in the system was 39.7 degrees celsius or roughly 103.5 degrees fahrenheit the series x has one terabyte of built-in storage as part of the xbox velocity architecture but that may not be enough for those who have lots of games downloaded of that one terabyte only 802 gigabytes is available after the xbox software is applied xbox's major offering right now is a one terabyte storage expansion card from seagate which costs 219.99 that plugs into the back of the system which maybe brings us sort of nostalgia for the days of when we had memory cards for games but this is one of the big differences from microsoft's biggest competitor the playstation 5 which will eventually let you install compatible pcie ssds like those you install on your own pc you could also get an external usb 3.1 hard drive to play xbox games from previous generations like the xbox one xbox 360 and the original xbox microsoft has opted not to make major changes over the xbox one controller so the version released for the series x is a bit smaller with a textured back and triggers for with a better grip the d-pad is the biggest change as it more closely resembles the disc on the xbox elite controller and it's very clicky and i love it the controller borrows one of the playstation 4's dual shock 4 innovations which was the share button for easier sharing to social media if you want to connect a wire buy a rechargeable battery microsoft to switch to usb type c but the controller comes with two double a batteries and frankly it seems a little bit archaic in 2020 if you've used an xbox one in the last few weeks the xbox series x and the series s for that matter the user interface will look pretty familiar to you it uses the same design as the october 2020 xbox one update which maintains continuity across the platform so you have the home screen with a list of games and apps that you've most recently used and it's easy to get back into the games you've played because the software is right there at the top and there's a sidebar that highlights game pass the microsoft store entertainment apps and more pressing the xbox button still brings up the guide and that brings up a side panel over whatever else you're doing which easily lets you go home or go to your game library or show what your friends are up to none of this is a big change but it's tried true tested and most importantly fast fans of the xbox will feel right at home and for those who are making the move from pc it's somewhat reminiscent of windows 10 start menu one new feature that i didn't know how much i would love was quick resume and this feature lets you swap between games that are in suspended states so these games are just stored directly in the memory and you only have to wait a few seconds to swap back to exactly where you were and sure you should always save your progress but this can keep you from having to go through start menus and loading data just to switch between games and not every game i tried supported quick resume so i did sometimes find myself back at the start screen of a game when i didn't expect it but knowing that most games going forward are going to support this feature as exciting i was able to switch between several at a time like the tourist halo the master chief collection marvel's avengers and gears 5. and to wait maybe 30 seconds give or take to be in the exact spot i was in no menus or further loading required for entertainment if there's a streaming service that you subscribe to it's probably on the xbox series x you've got netflix hulu amazon prime video disney plus voodoo showtime youtube and youtube tv peacock cbs all access major league baseball and funimation and those are just some of the options apple tv is also joining at launch marking a significant new entry and some like hbo max are a bit buried in the store but don't worry they're there for music you got spotify and prime music as well as deezer and pandora title however is not in the microsoft store at the moment and for watching streams twitch is in the store though the microsoft store does have some off-brand viewers that you might want to skip at launch microsoft is listing 30 games that are optimized for the series x and those include assassin's creed valhalla sea of thieves watchdogs legion dirt 5 forza horizon 4 nba 2k 21 and more and of those the majority support smart delivery which will let you buy a game on xbox one and play it across generations with the xbox series x or series s and since none of these are exclusives it also means that you could hold off right now if you don't need the latest and greatest hardware and there are more games coming soon like versions of borderlands 3 and call of duty black ops called war however a lot of games are also still in production there are exclusives coming with the notable one being the psychological horror game the medium which will also be on pc in december halo infinite arguably the real system seller here has been delayed until 2021 but meanwhile you could still play over a hundred games on game pass and game pass is the future of xbox you may not buy the series s for the series x but it all it still works on pc and this subscription is what microsoft wants you to subscribe to possibly more so than the hardware the xbox series x is a strong opening argument for a future filled with choice for gamers it's the most powerful option in a lineup with two price points and levels of power it utilizes a service and game pass that lets you play over 100 games on the hardware your pc or even stream to an android phone or you can just keep buying your own games on disk or digitally and run them on a quiet powerful gaming platform it also gives you the choice to play almost any game from four different generations of xbox and any peripheral from the last one microsoft has the looks to compete here as well as in power and in the entertainment center with a mature understated design even if it's a different shape than you might expect it and if only it had a usb type c port out of the gate its biggest weakness may be a lack of console exclusives sony will be launching the playstation 5 with spider-man miles morales demon souls sackboy a big adventure bug snacks and more but a wide array of third-party titles should provide plenty to play in the coming months it also means that you likely don't need to spring for the series x immediately as those games are also coming to last gen consoles like the xbox one and the playstation 4 but the series x also delivers more raw power at least on paper and we'll have to wait to see how developers take advantage of it the xbox is clearly modernized as it stands the engineering is impressive the offerings provide plenty of choice and the games look and play well this is xbox refinednext gen console gaming is about power but the xbox series x is also seemingly about empowerment the system with its 8 core 16 thread cpu and amd rdna 2 based gpu is on paper the most powerful console ever it's here and it's time for the review let's just say the xbox series x makes a powerful first impression even if you don't need one right away this is industrial design that i can get behind at just over 11 inches tall it's quite a different shape from other consoles coming closer to small pc designs like the corsair one on the front of the xbox series x there's a 4k blu-ray drive and a single usb 3.1 type a port the rest of the ports are relegated to the back and include two more usb type a ports an ethernet jack and a connector for the power cable as well as the hdmi output and the slot for xbox's new custom external ssds there's no hdmi input here microsoft and the xbox team have positioned the series x as being all about gaming you can lay the xbox series x down sideways on four small feet on its right side the bottom mounted stand is permanently attached to the system though so even when you lay it down it's small but and not all that distracting my favorite part of the design is actually the air holes on the top there's a 12 by 12 grid of holes cut into the chassis to release air and these holes are painted green on the inside so that when you approach the xbox you start to see a green circle reminiscent of the original xbox even if the system's off it's a cool effect that makes the series x feel more like a living room centerpiece than just the piece of tech the xbox series x boasts an eight core 16 thread cpu based on amd's zen 2 architecture at 7 nanometer as well as a gpu baked with amd's rdna 2 silicon with 52 compute units the dram is also on the soc with 16 gigabytes of gddr6 memory the gpu allows for hardware ray tracing support though we haven't seen a ton of software in time for this review that truly makes a huge use case for it like traditional pc gaming it's still used with a mix of traditional rasterization in theory the system on a chip supports 4k 120hz output though that will depend on the monitor you use and that the game itself supports it elsewhere on the xbox series x's split motherboard is the ssd storage a part of what microsoft calls the velocity architecture with 2.4 gigabytes per second of i o throughput this is what allows for faster load speeds that finally get on the level that pc gaming has been on for years as well as allowing for features like quick resume to suspend and resume multiple games at once one interesting spec to note is that the xbox series x is using wi-fi five it's not upgrading to wi-fi six which is unfortunate because that would really future-proof this device with upcoming routers over the course of reviewing the xbox series x we got to play a number of games some of them like gears 5 the tourist forza horizon 4 and gears tactics had already been optimized for the system while others like marvel's the avengers or madden nfl 2k21 were the xbox one versions of the game but will have optimization soon some of those games like the versus mode in gears 5 support 4k 120 in theory the xbox series x uses hdmi 2.1 which is largely relegated as of this moment to a few tvs and even fewer monitors for us 4k 60 was still the limit and i imagine that will be the case for most people for the immediate future still games play great on the xbox series x and it doesn't take much much of a trained eye to tell the difference between 30 and 60 frames per second and any game that could take advantage of that did and because backwards compatibility is almost entirely there minus a few connect games i was even able to go and download a freebie from the xbox 360 days ages wing to my library and it just worked as i remembered it of course the performance of the series x will likely be pushed more to its max in time as we've seen with just about every console generation developers tend to get better at optimizing for these platforms still if you're an xbox fan who plays current previous gen games they will run best here it's quite difficult to run something like a traditional benchmark on a console but there are metrics to give you a pretty good idea of how powerful a system is those include heat power and noise so during a race in the version of forza horizon 4 optimized for the series x we saw a peak of 169.2 watts being pulled to the system in gears 5 another optimized game it peaked at 192 watts in a backwards compatible game halo the master chief collection the system pulled a peak of 148.1 watts when the system is at idle it typically pulls around 41.3 watts and with the system asleep it runs around 11.7 watts and you could bring that down by putting it in energy saver mode though you would lose some features the xbox series x uses a single fan at the top of the system to bring air through the bottom of the system and this is part of what microsoft calls its parallel cooling architecture with three airflow channels a sizable heat sink over the chip a vapor chamber and a split motherboard the ram cpu and gpu are on one side and the i o is on the reverse in any case the system was effectively silent we measured ambient sound in our test lab at 35.3 decibels and with the system idle the sound meter measured it at the same thing 35.3 decibels while racing in forza horizon 4 it ranged from 35.4 to 37 decibels so i'm extremely impressed with what microsoft has done with the cooling system to keep it this quiet we also took images of the xbox series x through a flare camera and the hottest point in the system was 39.7 degrees celsius or roughly 103.5 degrees fahrenheit the series x has one terabyte of built-in storage as part of the xbox velocity architecture but that may not be enough for those who have lots of games downloaded of that one terabyte only 802 gigabytes is available after the xbox software is applied xbox's major offering right now is a one terabyte storage expansion card from seagate which costs 219.99 that plugs into the back of the system which maybe brings us sort of nostalgia for the days of when we had memory cards for games but this is one of the big differences from microsoft's biggest competitor the playstation 5 which will eventually let you install compatible pcie ssds like those you install on your own pc you could also get an external usb 3.1 hard drive to play xbox games from previous generations like the xbox one xbox 360 and the original xbox microsoft has opted not to make major changes over the xbox one controller so the version released for the series x is a bit smaller with a textured back and triggers for with a better grip the d-pad is the biggest change as it more closely resembles the disc on the xbox elite controller and it's very clicky and i love it the controller borrows one of the playstation 4's dual shock 4 innovations which was the share button for easier sharing to social media if you want to connect a wire buy a rechargeable battery microsoft to switch to usb type c but the controller comes with two double a batteries and frankly it seems a little bit archaic in 2020 if you've used an xbox one in the last few weeks the xbox series x and the series s for that matter the user interface will look pretty familiar to you it uses the same design as the october 2020 xbox one update which maintains continuity across the platform so you have the home screen with a list of games and apps that you've most recently used and it's easy to get back into the games you've played because the software is right there at the top and there's a sidebar that highlights game pass the microsoft store entertainment apps and more pressing the xbox button still brings up the guide and that brings up a side panel over whatever else you're doing which easily lets you go home or go to your game library or show what your friends are up to none of this is a big change but it's tried true tested and most importantly fast fans of the xbox will feel right at home and for those who are making the move from pc it's somewhat reminiscent of windows 10 start menu one new feature that i didn't know how much i would love was quick resume and this feature lets you swap between games that are in suspended states so these games are just stored directly in the memory and you only have to wait a few seconds to swap back to exactly where you were and sure you should always save your progress but this can keep you from having to go through start menus and loading data just to switch between games and not every game i tried supported quick resume so i did sometimes find myself back at the start screen of a game when i didn't expect it but knowing that most games going forward are going to support this feature as exciting i was able to switch between several at a time like the tourist halo the master chief collection marvel's avengers and gears 5. and to wait maybe 30 seconds give or take to be in the exact spot i was in no menus or further loading required for entertainment if there's a streaming service that you subscribe to it's probably on the xbox series x you've got netflix hulu amazon prime video disney plus voodoo showtime youtube and youtube tv peacock cbs all access major league baseball and funimation and those are just some of the options apple tv is also joining at launch marking a significant new entry and some like hbo max are a bit buried in the store but don't worry they're there for music you got spotify and prime music as well as deezer and pandora title however is not in the microsoft store at the moment and for watching streams twitch is in the store though the microsoft store does have some off-brand viewers that you might want to skip at launch microsoft is listing 30 games that are optimized for the series x and those include assassin's creed valhalla sea of thieves watchdogs legion dirt 5 forza horizon 4 nba 2k 21 and more and of those the majority support smart delivery which will let you buy a game on xbox one and play it across generations with the xbox series x or series s and since none of these are exclusives it also means that you could hold off right now if you don't need the latest and greatest hardware and there are more games coming soon like versions of borderlands 3 and call of duty black ops called war however a lot of games are also still in production there are exclusives coming with the notable one being the psychological horror game the medium which will also be on pc in december halo infinite arguably the real system seller here has been delayed until 2021 but meanwhile you could still play over a hundred games on game pass and game pass is the future of xbox you may not buy the series s for the series x but it all it still works on pc and this subscription is what microsoft wants you to subscribe to possibly more so than the hardware the xbox series x is a strong opening argument for a future filled with choice for gamers it's the most powerful option in a lineup with two price points and levels of power it utilizes a service and game pass that lets you play over 100 games on the hardware your pc or even stream to an android phone or you can just keep buying your own games on disk or digitally and run them on a quiet powerful gaming platform it also gives you the choice to play almost any game from four different generations of xbox and any peripheral from the last one microsoft has the looks to compete here as well as in power and in the entertainment center with a mature understated design even if it's a different shape than you might expect it and if only it had a usb type c port out of the gate its biggest weakness may be a lack of console exclusives sony will be launching the playstation 5 with spider-man miles morales demon souls sackboy a big adventure bug snacks and more but a wide array of third-party titles should provide plenty to play in the coming months it also means that you likely don't need to spring for the series x immediately as those games are also coming to last gen consoles like the xbox one and the playstation 4 but the series x also delivers more raw power at least on paper and we'll have to wait to see how developers take advantage of it the xbox is clearly modernized as it stands the engineering is impressive the offerings provide plenty of choice and the games look and play well this is xbox refined\n"