Xbox Series X to focus on "power, speed and compatibility"

The next-generation Xbox, titled Xbox Series X, is set to release during the holiday season of 2020 (as long as the raging coronavirus doesn't alter those plans) and while we've heard the words "most powerful console" being thrown around quite a bit, we haven't taken a deep dive into what we can expect from the powerful console until now. In collaboration with Digital Foundry, Microsoft recently published a lengthy piece on the Xbox Wire page on the official Xbox website, detailing the plans for what's to come and how it all came to be.

Xbox Series X will, according to Microsoft, "set a new bar for performance, speed and compatibility", which, following a long line of graphics-centred evolution prior, is sure to up the game significantly in regards to the console market. The graphics department isn't as in need of an upgrade as it was in the 8 bit to 16 bit or 2D to 3D times. We live in 4K times and even though the graphics update potential still exists, we're still ways off from an upped consumer standard. Rather than asking for 8K games, gamers are instead looking for better overall performance, such as higher frame-rate counts, which is one of the reasons that more and more gamers investing in a gaming PC. To remedy this for the sake of the console market, Microsoft is focusing its resources on hardware performance this generation. This, however, hardly means that it's forsaking graphical excellence, as stated by Xbox Series X director of product management Jason Ronald:

"While the Xbox Series X will deliver a massive increase in GPU performance and continue to redefine and advance the state of art in graphics with new capabilities such as hardware accelerated raytracing. We don't believe this generation will be defined by graphics or resolution alone."

The goal for the Xbox Series X was to build a next-generation console able to run games at 60 fps in 4K while also pushing boundaries by working towards offering 120 fps support. To make this happen, Xbox pushed forward with the help of AMD which created a custom processor for the console, sporting an 8 core AMD Zen 2 CPU and an RDNA 2-class GPU, offering the option to truly innovate for developers while offering a more powerful experience for console gamers. The new-found power of the Series X is, according to AMD's Sebastien Nussbaum, the "biggest generational leap of SOC [System on a Chip] and API design" that AMD has been able to accomplish with Microsoft to date. Nussbaum continued to state that "The Xbox Series X is going to be a beacon of technical innovation leadership for this console generation and will propagate the innovation throughout the DirectX ecosystem this year and into next year".

As the Xbox becomes more powerful, as does its features, and one of the more prominent new features is surely the real-time light and sound technology that is raytracing. Using DirectX Raytracing, the Xbox Series X is set to offer a more realistic audio-visual experience, as shown in Minecraft by Technical Director Clayton Vaught (displayed below).

The Coalition also showed off Gears 5 on the Xbox Series X, confirming faster loading times, added features that had to be disabled prior such as contact shadows and full PC-level Ultra spec settings at 60 fps in 4K on the Series X contra the Xbox One X's 30 fps cap. The Coalition's Mike Rayner could confirm that the game was currently running at 100 fps, with the option of 120fps being investigated. Those of you who are interested in grabbing Gears 5 for the new format can rest assured that an Xbox Series X-optimised version will be available at the Series X launch.

Moving on to the realm of memory and console architecture, Microsoft detailed the "Xbox Velocity Architecture", which is a new streaming and in-game asset optimised architecture that tightly integrates the hardware with the software, unlocking "new capabilities that have never been seen before in console development, allowing 100 GB of game assets to be instantly accessible by the developer".

To make this happen, Microsoft invested in SSD level I/O speeds and the team didn't just want to focus on faster loading times. "It's one of the most innovative parts of our new console. It's about revolutionizing how games can create vastly bigger, more compelling worlds" said Xbox Series X technical fellow Andrew Goossen. Microsoft stated that the new architecture will effectively be able to eliminate loading times between levels and create faster fast travel systems via this very architecture and the elevated processing power.

Apart from this, players who switch between games frequently will be delighted about the new Quick Resume feature, which lets them resume multiple games in an instant with the press of a button, picking up where they left off.

Those looking to play their last-gen games on the Series X can count on those games being elevated on the Series X as well and not only that, Microsoft's focus on cross-generation play is as vast as ever, letting gamers use their old Xbox One accessories, load last-gen saves, bypass purchasing a game more than once via Smart Delivery and experience cross-generation multiplayer on the Xbox Series X.

Microsoft also touched on latency, which you can read in-depth here.