The Ultimate Xbox Comparison

**The Next Generation of Consoles: A Game-Changer?**

As we approach the end of 2019, the gaming industry is abuzz with excitement about the next generation of consoles. Microsoft's Xbox Scarlett, Sony's PS5, and Nintendo are all set to launch new hardware that promises to revolutionize the way we play games.

**The Importance of Solid-State Drives (SSDs)**

One major factor that will contribute to the improved performance of these new consoles is the use of solid-state drives (SSDs) instead of traditional hard drives. While waiting for a minute to load a game was acceptable in 2013, it's now considered unacceptable with the current generation games being so slow to load.

SSDs are much cheaper than they were back then, and Microsoft should ship either a 500 gig or even a one terabyte SSD standard for the Xbox without it being an obscenely expensive console. Although it might be obscenely expensive for other reasons, I just think the SSD is probably pretty reasonable in the grand scheme of things.

**The Spec: A Massive Increase to the CPU**

This generation, we're looking at an absolutely massive increase to the CPU. The next-generation consoles will have significantly faster CPUs, somewhere in the neighborhood of two to three times better on the kind of the conservative estimate. The graphics won't be quite as big of a leap, mostly because the current generation of consoles actually have solid graphics.

**Graphics: A Doubling of GPU Horsepower**

When you do compare to something like the One X, we should see somewhere around a doubling of GPU horsepower, which is certainly not nothing but it's nowhere near the same kind of jump that we saw going from like PS3 to PS4. And in large part, that's because not only are the graphics fairly up to date, we're also no longer chasing the teraflop wars.

**New Technologies: 8K Support and Variable Refresh Rates**

The basic stuff behind the new AMD Navi GPUs is that they're focusing less on that raw compute number that has always been quoted as teraflops and more so on features that are specifically focused on gamers. We've got the 8K support, which, good luck seeing games running at 8K, but it also does support a full 120 frames per second, as well as variable refresh rates.

**Ray Tracing: A Game-Changer**

Then there's also some brand-new tech such as ray tracing, which will be up and running on the brand new Xbox Scarlett. Now this is something we actually know a little bit less about. They've talked about it, however, AMD has kept their cards pretty close to the chest.

So really, the only good example of ray tracing we have right now is what Nvidia is doing on the PC space with the RTX line. Now, if you're not familiar, ray tracing is actually fairly straightforward. It allows light in game to act pretty much like light acts in real life; it can bounce, it can scatter, as opposed to a lot of current games which require a lot of workarounds to actually get things to look decent.

**Microsoft's Ambitions: xCloud Streaming Service**

Microsoft has huge ambitions for their xCloud streaming service, which will allow you to play Xbox games pretty much anywhere, perhaps even with a small little streaming Xbox of their own. To be fair, Sony has access to a lot of these building blocks especially on the hardware side; however, it does seem at least from the outside like Microsoft is executing better.

**The Next Generation Console War**

Going into 2020, we're in store for an incredibly interesting console war between the PS5, the Xbox Scarlett, and especially considering Nintendo hasn't even started talking about what they're doing next generation. I'm really, really amped; it's a very good time to be a gamer.

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Hey guys, this is Austinand welcome to theultimate Xbox comparison.- When I started here back in 2000,the most recent consolethat we were all playingwas Dreamcast, we got it on 9/9/99.In many ways, that was there'sa lot of special spiritualconnections between theDreamcast and original Xbox.You know, it ran actually WindowsCE as an operating system.We had partnered with alot of the folks at Segato bring a lot of thatcontent also to Xboxand we were learning a lot from them.- Its thinking.- The Sega Dreamcast was the first timethat a version of Windowswas found on a home console.The inclusion of WindowsCE meant that developershad options for much more advanceddevelopment tools fromthe PC such as DirectX.The problem here was the Segahad their own custom development toolwhich in a lot of waysactually made it much simplerfor developers to take advantageof the limited resourcesthat were available on the Dreamcast.The titles that did take advantageof Windows CE were pretty cool though.We're talking Tomb Raider,the original Rainbow Six aswell as Resident Evil II.The Dreamcast didn't exactlyset the world on fire,however, it did plant theseed of an idea over Microsoftto start their own console business.Despite having high profile PC exclusivessuch as Age of Empires as wellas Microsoft Flight Simulator,Bill Gates was nervousabout the upcoming successor potential success ratherof the Sony PlayStation 2.(upbeat music)When Seamus Blackley, agraphics programmer at Microsoftapproached gates about anidea for their own console,it was very quickly greenlit.Blackley led a small group ofpeople at Microsoft in 1998to start working on the Midway Project,which fun fact was namedafter the Battle of Midwaywith US decisively beat theJapanese, aka console wars.- Well, there was a small group of folksthat have this like bigidea that had workedon DirectX technology on the PC sideand said, hey, what ifwe took this technologyand Microsoft had madea bunch of PC games,so we took that technology and we built itinto a plug and play kind of appliancelike console for the living room.And we felt like we had the tech,we have the operating system capabilities,we had the online networking capabilities,we actually had game studio,so we had a lot of the internalgradients to make it happen.- Other PC tech includingusing an internal hard drive,something that hadn'tbeen done on consoles yet,as well as taking advantageof an internet connectionwhich would work right out of the box.In the end, Microsoft opted to loadthe Xbox up with a custom versionof Windows 2000 for the operating systemas well as running DirectX forthe actual games themselves.Now the DirectX portion of thisactually is a pretty important point.So not only did this havea ton of different nameswhen it was being developed,but the most common onewas the DirectX Box,which of course was shortenedto Xbox, a much cleaner name.The Xbox was officially announcedat GDC in March of 2000,coincidentally about the same timethat the Sony PlayStationII went on sale in Japan.With that console quicklylooking to become a juggernaut,there was a huge uphillbattle for the Xbox to go.I mean it's sure of course you knowit's Microsoft and it is huge company,but its easy to forget notonly just how difficultand expensive it is to create a console,but of course, howexpensive it is to spendall this marketingdollars and all this stuffto get people on board toactually buy your brand new Xbox.To combat this, Microsoftaggressively marketedthe Xbox in the run up to E3 of 2000.Now at the show there they met a developerwhich would end up completelychanging the future ofthe Xbox, it was Bungie.And very quickly they purchasedthe studio for $30 millionand the Xbox had its killer app.Now Bungie had beenworking on Halo since 1997and it had a very, very long lifespanto get to the point where itactually launched on the Xbox.First of all it started outas a real time strategy game,which then morphed intoa third person shooterand finally landed asa first person shooter,which of course really kindof revolutionized the genre.Now of course today Halois synonymous with Xboxbut back in 1999, it was goodold Steve Jobs at Macworldwho was showing off thebrand new Bungie title Halo.- This game is gonna shipearly next year for Bungieand this is the first timeanybody has ever seen it,its the first time they debut it,and so I'm very happy to welcome on stageJason Jones, who is theco founder of Bungieand the Halo Project lead,Halo's the name of the game,and we're gonna see forthe first time Halo.- Halo was originallygoing to be a Mac title,and in fact, it didactually ship on the Macbut even though this versionwas a little bit rough,you can still see a lot ofsimilarities between thisand the final version was shipped on Xbox.Bill Gates revealed the finalXbox design at CES in 2001and he didn't do it alone,he had a little bit of help from The Rock.And no, not like The Rockas we know him today,I'm talking The Rock in full character,because 2001 was a really weird time.- Good morning, and Bill Gates,you have some pretty coolcatch phrases as well.What are some of your favorite?- My favorite is probably writinghardcore C to create slick type code.(audience laughing)- The Xbox officially went on saleat midnight on November 152001 here in the United Statesand it followed up in early2002 in other parts of the worldsuch as Europe as well as Asia.And it didn't exactly will catch onanywhere else around the world.By the end of its lifecycle,the Xbox had only sold amere 450,000 units in Japanand only about 2 million inthe entire Asia Pacific region.That was a massive failure,although it did perform alittle bit better in Europewhere they sold a grand totalof around 6 million Xboxes.Halo really is the reason thatthey sold the Xbox at all.In the first few months of being on sale,they sold over 1 million copies of Halo,which is a lot especiallyby 2001 standards.- You know, the team had a big visionand had a lot of crazy ideas,and it was just fun tolike kind of figure outhow do we pull that alloff and then content.I remember when we first showed Halofor the first time at E3,original Halo Combat Evolved,people were kind of like, I'm not sure,I mean, first person shootersreally hadn't existed with a controllerand mapping the keyboardand mouse controllersto a controller was a new thing,people took a littlewhile to get used to it,but then as soon as we launched,it was clear that we had something specialand but not only did Halo take offbut then we launched XboxLive the next holiday,it really took off from there.(intense music)- Less than a year after release,Microsoft did give the Xbox a price cutgoing from $300 down to 200.Now this meant that they couldbetter compete with the GameCubeas well as hopefullywith the PlayStation 2but it did mean that Microsoftwas selling the console at loss,and at the end of the day,no console of this generationcould even come close tothe kind of sales numbersof the PlayStation 2 set down.Inside, the Xbox was very clearlythe most powerful consoleof this generationand that is almostentirely due to the factthat they did opt to go fora very PC like architecture.This uses a custom Intel Pentium IIICPU clocked at 733 megahertz,64 megabytes of DDR SRAMas well as a very customized Nvidia GPU.Now this meant this hadsome real performanceespecially in games suchas Project Gotham Racing,as well as Halo 2, whichperformed well and looked great,however, it meant thebackwards compatibilityfor future generations wasa little bit more difficultbut we'll get into thatjust a little bit later.Now the Xbox did use a DVD driveunlike the GameCube and Dreamcast,however, unlike the PlayStation 2,you had to purchase adongle as well as a remoteto actually play any kind of DVD content.Just put a DVD in standardly,it just doesn't really do anything.So that was pretty big negative pointin that you had to go buy extra stuffwhereas lots of people boughtPS2s purely as DVD players.This also opened up a world of homebrewand piracy issues for the Xbox.Now Microsoft did redesignthe internal componentsof the Xbox a couple times to tryto get around people who are cracking it,but generally speaking,this even to this dayis still a very popular emulation machineand there are even likeflash drives that you can buythat will allow you to completelyopen it up for homebrewor whatever you wanna do on it.One of the more unique and controversialparts of the original Xboxwas the controller itshipped with, the Duke.Now this thing was absolutely massive.And while some people doswear by it even to this day,for the most part, it wasa pretty major failure,especially considering thatthey actually developeda secondary controller calledthe S for the Japanese marketwhich they subsequently used to shipeverywhere in the world by 2002.So the Duke was cool, butit didn't exactly last longand also, have you seenhow big this thing is?One slight advantageof the Xbox controlleris that it did introduce theidea of a breakaway cable.Let's say your annoying roommatedecides to kick yourXbox or kick your cable,it would just attach as opposedto ripping your entire console down,which is almost as good as wireless.- Even in the color materialsdesign of the hardware,the cables themselves had sort ofa translucent, green effect,it really tried to reflectthe quality of the user experience,so, as you remember, when youturned on the original Xboxyou had this sort of rotating spherethat felt out of this worldand so we really wanted the hardwareto start to bridge that experience.- The real linchpin for theXbox's success with Xbox Livewhich launched in November of 2002,a full year after the console came out.Now it was always designedwith online play in mind,I mean, of course, it hasethernet jack on the back.However, Xbox Live isreally what separated thisfrom the rest of theconsoles of that generation.It's easy to take thiskind of stuff for grantedbut there's a lot oflegitimate innovationsthat came with Xbox Liveon the original Xbox.That ethernet jack, providedthat you had broadband internetallowed you to not only playgames with other people,but you can even download contentto your hard drive for gamesor you can chat via voicewhich we you actually had the headset.None of this stuff wasreally even remotely aroundfor some of those very, very earlyconsole gaming experiences,I mean it was all kludgy and weird,kinda like the Nintendo switches today.This was a big hit almost immediately,there were over 150,000 peoplewho subscribed in the first weekand over 50 games are availablefor Xbox Live by the end of 2003.Now the easiest way to tellwould be to take a lookat the boxes which showlive online enabledand of course, Halo 2 is reallyone of the biggest sellersof the entire Xbox system.By 2003, Microsoft was well underwayworking on the sequel to the Xbox, the 360but they still had onefinal game to releasedand of course, that was Halo 2which came out In November of 2004.And this was an absolutely massive sellerwith over 8.5 million copies sold.Despite its cliffhanger ending,Halo 2 is widely regarded as oneof the best games in the Halo franchise,and one of the most influentialmultiplayer games of all time.Just to give you a good ideaof how popular this game was,Halo two was still the most popular gameon Xbox Live all the way up into 2006when it's finallydethroned by Gears of War.Yeah, not a bad run.It's impressive thatright out of the gate,Microsoft were able to competewith the giants of the spacesuch as Sega and Nintendo and Sony,but that was certainly not enoughbecause their next fore was a, let's say,just a little bit more successful.Since the beginning of 2003,Microsoft were hard to workon the next generation,of course, being the 360.Now in large part, thiswas really kicked offwhen they had a huge meetingat their campus in Bellevue, Washingtonwhere over 400 game developers attended.Why they should pick upsupport for the brand new Xbox.By August of 2003, Microsofthad made the decisionto go with ATI to provide the graphicson the Xbox 360 as opposed to Nvidia,who of course did provide theGPU inside the original Xbox.Now this is largelyemblematic of the differencesbetween the originalXbox program and the 360.The original Xbox was largelyjust made up of componentsthat were pretty much right offthe shelf from the PC space.Now that enabledMicrosoft to get a consoleout into the world fairly quickly,but the downside was that itwas very expensive to produceand they really couldn't customize thingsand shrink things over the generationsto kind of make it cheaper and cheaper.Whereas with the Xbox 360,this was designed to be fullycustom from the ground upand that made a huge difference.- It is midnight eastern time,do you know where your Xbox 360 is?Well, it's actuallyprobably right over there.Yes, the moment we'vebeen waiting for is here.Adam is down at Best Buyin the Mojave Desertto witness the sale ofthe first Xbox 360, Adam.- All right, well, the excitement leveljust kicked up a couple of notches.We're right here at animpromptu Best Buy shopand all of the new Xbox360s are being unloaded.- When the 360 launched inthe US on November 22 2005,it was an immediate smash hit.So much so in fact that a lot of peopleassumed that Microsoft were artificiallyholding back the productionto make the line seem longer,when he they were just buildingthese things as fast as they could.And by the end of 2005, amere month and change later,they had sold over 1.5million of the consoles.- I would say I am probablymost proud of the Xbox 360.I just think like the launch lineup,I think the leap from wherewe went was so massive.We were the first box connected to the TVthat streamed Netflix, a lotof people don't remember that.But I remember actually workingwith Netflix in early dayswhere they were a mail order DVD businessand they were lookingfor digital distributionand we were like, hey, whatif we put Netflix on our Xboxand allow people to stream movies?And just the games I mean, wetalked about project offeringsCall of Duty, KOTOR, Mass Effect,of course the Gearsfranchise, the Halo franchise,Forza in many ways gotborn in that generation.So yeah, I would say that wasprobably the most special.- The 2005 launch date is importantbecause it was a full year before the Wiias well as the PlayStation3 is launched.Now it's easy to thinkabout it today as like,oh, the Xbox was a little bit better,but in reality, this wasthe beginning of the HD era.(intense music)Now in 2005, yeah, thereare a few flat screen TVsand HD was just startingto become a thing,but the 360 really was what popularized itin a lot of people's homes.Especially considering that you can getthis kind of performance a fullyear before the PlayStation,well, it didn't get off to agreat start for the Sony camp.The gap and release datesmeant that Microsofthad a full year toreally make sure that 360was fully established withessentially no competition.Now yeah, sure, there were a few gamesthat came out for the PS3launch like Resistance,but, by that point the 360had a ton of great titleslike Call of Duty 2,Gears as well as Fear.Look, there's no doubt that Microsoftbeating Sony to the punchpaid off in a big way,however, they also had aslightly uncomfortable oversight,the Xbox 360 red ring of death.- The red rings of doom signalthat your Xbox 360 is fried.Microsoft hasn't specified the causebut users say the console's cooling systemjust can't take the heat of a lot of play.- So when the hardware would fail,the power button would lightup with three red lightswhich would you indicate thatyou have a major, major issue.I'm sure Jimmy will do a great jobof showing off what thatlooks like right now.Now this wasn't necessarily for everyone,so not all Xbox has died,but generally speakingmost of the launch 360sdid not last very long.Now I will give Microsoft some credit,they did institute a three year warrantyand in large part if youhad a red ring to Xbox 360,you could just ship it backand they would swap it out.But the problem was that the 360,I don't wanna say was rushed,but there were certainlya lot of major issueswith the reliability on that first model.Now, there are a fewdifferent reasons why,some people have speculatedthat it was to dowith thermal paste or maybe the solderthat would kind of startto melt after a while,but regardless, that first360, it didn't last very long.People came up with all kinds ofridiculous remedies to fix this.I know the towel trick was big for a whileand that you would turn on your 360,wrap a towel around it and Iguess the solder or somethingwould reflow and it wouldwork for a little bit.A lot of times the towel trickwould only get your 360 towork for like 20 minutes,like it was just not a good solution.Even with this technical issues,the Xbox 360 launchactually really strongly,and a large part was becauseit had a good design.- The modularity thing wasreally out of necessityto have an affordable productthat more people could get from day one.So upgrading hard drives, adding wireless,attaching more controllers, et cetera,all of ways that we can give people choiceand really get these game consolesand experiences to more people.- So the Xbox 360 cameout, there are two models,the premium which costs $400and came with a massive20 gigabyte hard driveas well as a wireless controller,and then there was the core model.Now this was only $300 whichmade it a really good deal,and while you didn't havea wireless controllerand you didn't have a hard drive,you had to deal with memory cards,but this got a lot of people into the doorbecause again, this wasthe very first HD console,it was really exciting.And sure lots of people bought a 360before realizing theyhad to buy a hard driveor a bunch of memorycards but that was fine.Nearly five years afterthe original 360 came out,in 2010, we got this, the Xbox 360 Slim.Now not only is it significantly smaller,but it had some very keyupgrades like Wi-Fi built in.Inside, this was a very simplifiedversion of the original 360so not only was everything shrunk down,but they had a little bit moreof a clever design with the motherboardto add the CPU and theGPU together on one chip.And generally speaking thiswas not only cheaper to manufacturebut in large part it was betteracross the board comparedto the launch 360.The Slim also came in a widerange different configurations,special editions withdifferent hard drives.And this was the very first Xbox 360that made it down to amere $200 price pointwith the four gigabyte internal drive.Really, the Slim actuallydid a very good jobof distilling everythingthat was great about the 360and putting it into a smaller,cheaper, more reliable package.And then Microsoft decidedto create another one.In June of 2013, wegot this the Xbox 360 E.Now this was announced at the same E3as the original Xbox One.And while the brand newconsole was super exciting,the E just wasn't.So it's not really that muchsmaller than the slim Xbox 360,it doesn't really haveany additional features,in fact, has like fewer USB ports.And while I guess thedesign is a little bitmore reminiscent of the Xbox One, I dunno,there just really wasn'ta lot going for this guy.Now in large part, the reasonwhy this was so successfulwas that Microsoft had a hugehead start going into the generation.The original Xbox reallypioneered online gamingin any kind of real cohesive wayand all that camestraight over to the 360.So not only could youmove your account overbut things like Party Chatreally solved multiplayer lobbiesthe ability to watchNetflix with your friends,there was a lot of stuff that Xbox Livedid right immediately out of the gate,whereas on the PS3 side,well, I mean PSN existed, and it was free.Another big element to the Xbox 360success was Xbox Live Arcade.Now this doesn't sound impressive today.It was an online storewhere you could purchaseand download fairly cheap indie games,but this is a big deal.Back then there reallyweren't a lot of indie titlesthat you could buy for a console.Now there were a lot ofrestrictions on these games,they had to have only200 achievement points,they had to have a demo,they only ran at 720p which to be fairwas actually pretty good for the 360.But the bigger issue, especiallywith the launch version,was that the games had tobe 50 megabytes or less,like smaller than a gamethat runs on your phone,mostly because it needs to runon a memory card of 64 megabytes.Thankfully, that restrictionwas loosened after a whileand tons of great gamesflourished because of it.The interface of the Xbox 360,well, it never was quite as cleanas what you got on the PlayStation 3so there were a few major revisions.First of all it launched with the blades.So this wasn't a terrible UI,you could go betweena few different bladesto pick your games or videos or whatever,but when it really came into its own,is what the New Xbox Experiencewhere you had a revolutionarynew interface with avatars.You could install games to the drive,but really my personal sweet spotwas back when they finally brought outthe new Metro UI to the Xbox 360.Yes, I'm sure you rememberthe wonderful interface,the classic that was knownfrom Windows 8 and the Zune HD.Well, yep, that came to the 360.And, it was slow.The Xbox 360 controllerhas easily gone downas one of the best of all time.Now when you look at it,it's actually not that big of an upgradeover what you've got withthe Xbox S controller,however it got rid of the stupid blackand white buttons infavor of actual bumpers,and realistically,this is still the standardfor not only the Xbox,but it was the standard forthe PC for over a decade.Now at this point, yes, theXbox One I personally do prefer,but this was way, wayahead of the DualShock 3as far as I'm concerned.Just like the original Xbox,the 360, well, it hadsome bumps along the waywas an incredibly successful console.And I think a lot ofpeople look back at thisand think about this reallyas the sort of sweet spot,the golden age of Xbox, if you will.Now, to be fair, this console generationwas really good to prettymuch everyone in this space.I mean, Nintendo soldlike 100 billion Wiis,the PS3 even though it cameoff to a very slow startended up actually barelysurpassing the 360 at the end,but as far as I'm concerned,the Xbox 360 was the realwinner of this generation.Not only did it have abunch of amazing gameslike Halo 3 and Gearsof War as well as Alan Wake,but what it really did wasset the stage for gamingas we know it with hugethings such as Xbox Live.However, a few short years later,storm clouds hit the horizonas it was time for the Xbox One.The Xbox One was unveiled at E3 of 2013and it had a rough go from the start.So first of all, it cost afull $100 more than the PS4and that was only the first in a seriesof very questionable decisions,which really made the Xbox Onelook bad right out of the gate.I remember I was actually there at E3when they announced this,and man, the crowd'sreaction was not too pretty.- Now, have you ever wanted to domore than one thing at atime when you're watching TV?Of course you have.- $500, Kinect, DRM, it looks like a VCR.Actually, that last partwas what people said.Now there were a lot of issueswith the way that theyannounced the Xbox One,but the biggest and by farthe most damaging was the DRM.All right, so time to gatheraround and pay attentionbecause the original policywas well, confusing to say the least.So to start out with,if you purchased a game,whether it was on disk or digital,as soon as you put it in your Xbox,it would then be permanentlytied to your gamertag.So goodbye selling that usedcopy of Modern Warfare 17on GameStop because not gonna happen.Oh, and did I mentioned that your consolehad to be connected every24 hours to the internetotherwise it wouldn't work?Yeah, that was popular,everyone really loved that.I know Sony had a very clear videoon how you can share games on the PS4.- Thanks.- And then there was theXbox One version of Kinect.Now this guy came withall the launch Xbox Ones,and was a huge reason why itwas a full $100 moreexpensive than the PS4.On top of that,at least it based on theinitial announcement,this is going to bemandatory for the Xbox,if you didn't have it pluggedin, it just wouldn't functionand a lot of the UI wasbuilt around Kinect.Now it wasn't all bad,there were certainly advantages to Kinectand honestly even afterit was sort of phased out,there were a lot of use for itin the PC space becauseit was a great tracker,but for games, not so helpfulunless you're, I dunno, intoJust Dance or something.The reaction as you might imaginewas overwhelmingly negativeand Sony did everythingthey could to really play upall of the strength of the PS4which at the time were many,many, many, many, many.To give Microsoft some credit,they did reverse a lot of these decisionsbefore the Xbox One actually went on sale.The DRM was the first to go.So the Xbox One does stillinstall games to the hard drivebut all you do to make themwork is just insert the disk.You take it out and youcan give it someone else,sell it, whatever the case is.On top of that, they did get ridof the requirement to use Kinecteven though it was still bundledwith the Xbox for a little while.But all this being said, thedamage was absolutely doneand Microsoft's roughest consolegeneration was just beginning.The original Xbox Onelaunched on November 22 2013with exactly one option, black.Well, you know what, I'llbe completely honest,I actually think that this is a stillpretty decent looking console.Spec wise, the Xbox One shares an almostidentical architecturewith the PlayStation 4.So they're both AMD-based,they both have a 500 gig hard driveand they both have the same eight coreAMD Jaguar CPU inside.Although to give the Xboxa little bit of credit,it is very slightly higherclocked versus the PS4.That however is pretty muchthe end of the good stuffand where the, let's callthem compromises begin.The big problem came down to graphics.Sony pretty early on committedto using GDDR5 memorywhich was standard forgraphics cards at the timeand delivered a ton of bandwidthat the cost of lots of moneywhich is never good when you'retrying to build a console.With most rumors paying the PS4at having only four gigs of RAM,Microsoft opted to go for thatslower but cheaper DDR3 memoryand offered the Xbox One with a fulleight gigabytes of stuff.This meant that theperformance of the Xbox Onewas inferior to the PS4in almost every way.Not only did it have slower memorybut they had also dedicateda large portion of their APUto that ESRAM buffer toactually speed up the DDR3,which meant that not onlydid this have slower memorybut it also was moredifficult to develop forbecause it had that ESRAM bufferthat devs had to keep in mind,and to top it all off, becausethey put that in there,they didn't have enough roomfor a big GPU like the PS4 did.So it was slow memory, hard to work onand it was less powerful overall.This haunts the base Xbox to this day.So where the PlayStation4 was able to run gamesat a full 1080p in most cases,this guy would usuallyrun games at 720p or 900p.And in cases where theywere visually the same,a lot of times PS4games just ran smoother.And all this put together meantthat it was very, very clearthat the PS4 was the more powerful consoleand the Xbox didn't have reallyany technical advantagewhich was meaningful.Fast forward to August of 2016and we got the Xbox One S.As the slim version ofthe original console,this was better in every single way.Not only was it way smallerand it even includedan internal power supply versusthe giant brick of the One,but on top of that it supportsa full 4K out as well as HDR.And then we have the weirdestinclusion in the Xbox One line,the Xbox One S All DigitalEdition or Xbox SAD for short.So this is literallyidentical to the One S,except that they removedthat Ultra HD bluray playerand knocked $50 off the price.Although the One S for the most partwas actually available on salefor less than the SAD guy,but it plays digital games.The biggest advancement for the Xbox One,however, it came with the Xbox One X.Now this was teased at E3at 2016 as Project Scorpioand went on sale in November of 2017.- Well, I think for us, you know,it kind of brought us backto like our original roots,and we built the original Xbox,it was the most powerfulconsole at the time, you know?And sometimes it's like,do you wanna be the best selling productor do you actually wannabe the best product?And we defined ourselves as we knewthe competition already had a head start,we actually wanna make the best console.And I think that's what wedeliberately did with the Xbox.I think if you look at the Xbox One X,you know, the leadership we have therebeing the most powerfulconsole kind of brought us backto what that root andreason and foundation was,and that is our passion going forward.We wanna continue to innovate and deliverand bring the most powerful,most capable hardwarein the console space to our fans.- Priced at $500, to One X is a lotmore expensive than the One S,although it's not actuallyvery slightly smaller,and importantly, itdelivers a lot more powerand have to play a lot ofgames at a true 4K resolution.The CPU was slightlyoverclocked in the One Xbut the big differencecame down to graphics.Gone is the old DDR3 memoryand the ESRAM buffer,and in is a full 12gigabytes of GDPR5 memoryas well as a much, much bigger GPU,which really does enable 4K gaming.Now sure, the PS4 and the PS4 Prowere way better than the Onebut the One X definitelytook the crown backas this generation'smost powerful console.- We're always thinking ofthe whole thing as the system.The controller is the thing that you hold,and you interact with the controllera lot more than the console itselfcause that's kinda on yourshelf or under your TV,and so we pay a ton of focusto the design of the controllerand making sure thatwe're always advancingthat ergonomically, functionally.- We try not to take awaylike features or thingsthat people loved aboutthe older controllers.One thing you'll noticeis that the thumbsticksare still asymmetrical asthey have been over time,and that's something our fanshave told us that they love,and that's something thatwe consider like a cool partof our design and we wouldn't change that.- One place that the XboxOne has lagged behindthe competition its entirelifespan is in exclusive games.Stuff like Forza saysgreat year after year,Gears 4 was a good if alittle bit unconventional reboot,however, games such as Halo 5had decent multiplayer but on top of that,we had games like QuantumBreak which really fell flat.And while the first Titanfallwas a great exclusive on the Xbox One,the follow up went multi platformand didn't really perform all that well.Now, sure there are a lotof decent indie titles,but for the most part,there really has not beenone killer app this generationon why you should actuallybuy an Xbox One over PS4.Now there are some optionssuch as the Halo Master Chief Collection,but nowadays it's acollection of old games,but they've been broken for years,like literally, it took themlike three or four yearsto finally get a lot of thesemultiplayer bugs figured out.So a few years ago, Microsoftincluded some Xbox 360backwards compatibility on the One.Now this is not for allgames, although this pointis the vast majority of major 360 titles,and the best part is they just work.So if you have the disk,you put into the Xbox,and it does have to re-download the gamewhich has been recompiled for the One,but you have to pay anything.Microsoft has also brought out a selectionof original Xbox games whichare playable on the One.Now this is especiallyimpressive consideringthat the original Xbox isincredibly hard to emulatethanks to that very unusual Nvidia GPU,I mean its the reason why we reallystill have never had aproper Xbox emulator.Now, all that is pure of the factthat if you're playing on an Xbox One X,you can actually getsome major improvementsto performance as well as resolution.So a lot of games will run ina nine times higher resolutionwhich for a lot of, especially 360 gamescan actually scale themto pretty much a full 4K.All of this brings usto the latest additionto the ecosystem, Xbox Game Pass.So this is a Netflix stylesubscription servicewhich came out in 2017and it has been majorlyoverhauled since then.Look, the Xbox One launch wasa complete and total failureand it robbed Microsoftof a lot of momentumthat they had coming from the Xbox 360.When you look at this generation,it is clear that thePlayStation 4 has wonand there's a lot ofmomentum in the Nintendo campwith the Switch toward the end.However, all that being said,with Microsoft being the underdogs,it's meant that they've tried really hardto make the Xbox One better,and if you look at this console todayversus what came out back in 2013,there's a massive difference.Today we sit at a veryinteresting time for Xbox.On one hand, lots of peoplehave fond memories of the 360but on the other, as far asthey've come with the Xbox One,it certainly has not beenable to measure up to the PS4.I mean, it's not a coincidence that Xboxhasn't released official sales numbersfor the One in quite a few years now.I don't think it's an exaggerationto say that this upcomingconsole generationis a make or break for Xbox,either Scarlett does welland is a huge success,or the Xbox brand gets absorbed into a PCand cloud based soup of disappointments.Microsoft have beenclear, this time around,they're focusing on gaming.One of the key new featureswill be the addition of custom SSD.Now this will be standard onall of the Scarlett modelsreleased so far as we know,and this proves to be a huge,huge benefit for gamers.Now this generation,we've had a lot of memory,a lot of CPU resources,and so we've been able to have someincredibly detailed open worlds,but the problem has beenwhen it actually comesto load those open worlds,it takes forever on these standardslow hard drives that we have right now.I mean, Red Dead 2 feels like it takeslike two minutes justto get into the game.And mind you, once you get in,a lot of times load times aren't so bad,but I mean, it's a hugelyfrustrating experienceto like fast travel and wait a minutejust for something to load,whereas with an SSD, insteadof waiting that minute,you might only have towait a of couple seconds.The reason the current generation gamesare so slow to loadalmost entirely comes downto their very, very slowlaptop based hard drives.Now back in 2013, this made perfect sense.SSDs back then were incredibly expensive.However, today here in 2019,SSDs are much, much cheaper.I think it's completelyreasonable for Microsoftto ship either a 500 gig or perhapseven a one terabyte SSDstandard for the Xboxwithout it being anobscenely expensive console.Although it might be obscenelyexpensive for other reasons,I just think the SSD is probablypretty reasonable in thegrand scheme of things.Then there's the spec.So this generation,we're looking at an absolutelymassive increase to the CPU.Now I've already gone in depthon sort of the performancethat you might be able to expect on this,you guys can check out that video,but TLDR, the next generation consoleswill have significantly faster CPUs,somewhere in the neighborhoodof two to three times betteron the kind of the conservative estimate.Now the graphics won't bequite as big of a leap,mostly because the currentgeneration of consolesactually have solid graphics.So when you do compare tosomething like the One X,we should see somewhere arounda doubling of GPU horsepower,which is certainly not nothingbut its nowhere near the samekind of jump that we sawgoing from like PS3 to PS4.And in large part, that's becausenot only are the graphicsfairly up to date,we're also no longerchasing the teraflop wars.A lot of the basic stuffbehind the new AMD Navi GPUsis that they're focusing lesson that raw compute numberthat has always been quoted as teraflopsand more so on featuresthat are specifically focused on gamers.We've got the 8K support which,good luck seeing games running at 8K,but it also does support afull 120 frames per second,as well as variable refresh rates.Then there's also some brandnew techs such as ray tracing,which will be up and runningon the brand new Xbox Scarlett.Now this is something we actuallyknow a little bit less about.So they've talked about it,however, AMD has kept theircards pretty close to the chest.So really, the only goodexample of ray tracingwe have right now is what Nvidia is doingon the PC space with the RTX line.Now, if you're not familiar,ray tracing is actuallyfairly straightforward.It allows light in game to act pretty muchlike light act in real life,it can bounce, it can scatter,as opposed to a lot of current gameswhich require a lot of,shall we say workarounds,to actually get things to look decent.Ray tracing does a lotof that work for you,or at least gives you the tools to.Now the really cool part about thisis that when you look atgames such as Metro Exodusas well as Battlefield,you can see early glimpse of whatRTX and ray tracing will allow you to dobut as this becomes more and more standardacross the next generation of consoles,it should mean that this is goingto be coming to everyone, right?If you take all of this and combine itwith a lot of these smart movesthat Microsoft has been making lately,including supporting notonly original Xbox games,but also the 360 and theXbox One on the Scarlett,and on top of that, theScarlett should also supportmost Xbox One accessorieslike the Elite controller,although maybe not Kinect,that might not actually make the cut.So Microsoft has huge ambitionsfor their xCloud streaming service,which will allow you to playXbox games pretty much anywhere,perhaps even with a small littlestreaming Xbox of their own.Now, to be fair, Sony has access to a lotof these building blocksespecially on the hardware side,however, it does seem atleast from the outside,like Microsoft is executing better.They've made tons of smart decisionsover the last few years with the Xbox One,all which is pretty muchrolling into Scarlett,and especially considering that Microsoftis putting their giant piles of cashto work by purchasing a lot of studios,it does seem like the Xbox Scarlettshould be launching ata much better positionthan the Xbox One ever was in.All I can is this, going into 2020,we're in store for anincredibly interestingconsole war between thePS5, the Xbox Scarlett,and especially considering the Nintendohasn't even started talking aboutwhat they're doing next generation,I'm really, really amped,it's a very, very good time to be a gamer.(soft music)