The Xbox One X Review: Putting A Spotlight On Gaming
by Brett Howse on November 3, 2017 3:01 AM EST- Posted in
- Consoles
- Microsoft
- Xbox One
- Xbox
- Xbox One X
Additional Gameplay Footage
We've only had a few days with the console, but we have had a chance to try out some of the games. Using the Xbox Game Capture features, some gameplay was captured to get a sample of some of the performance and quality gains could be made with the Xbox One X. The Game Capture does compress the video though, so it is not as pristine as it would be while playing, and it also converts the HDR video to SDR to allow for the proper colors to be seen when you share the clips, although if you look at the following clips, it doesn't do a great job with the transition to SDR from HDR.
Not all of the games are yet ready for the Xbox One X yet though, with only a handful that have the Xbox One X Enhanced logo ready to go for the review. Gears of War 4 was one of the games, which we showed some images of earlier, and there were a couple more ready as well, including Disneyland Adventures.
Although it may seem like a game that wouldn't stress a system, in 4K and HDR, the textures and high resolution made an impact. Here's a quick video of the intro of this game on both the Xbox One, and the Xbox One X.
Disneyland Adventures on Xbox One
Disneyland Adventures on Xbox One X in 4K HDR
One thing you notice playing the game is just how much more sharp everything is, especially things in the background. The castle comes into focus much earlier on the Xbox One X version of this video. As with Gears of War 4, there's still some issues with coloring on the HDR converted video. If you are doing a lot of gameplay capture, it may be best to set HDR to off. Also, there's a small hiccup at the start of the Xbox One X video, as the game is just finishing loading. This doesn't appear to happen once that load is complete.
Here's another clip from Forza Motorsports 7, which is one of the launch titles for 4K and HDR, but as of this review, the 4K support is not yet added, so this will be a demo of playing a title without the Enhanced option available. This is from the Autodromo Nazionale Monza, on the Curva Parabolica.
Forza Motorsports 7 on Xbox One
Forza Motorsports 7 on Xbox One X
Even though the 4K support is not there, the game does support HDR, which improves the look of the game quite a bit, even though you can't see it in the SDR converted video. Forza is a pretty lean engine, so the developers are targetting 4K60 for this title. The aliasing of 1080p content in this game is pretty strong, so it will benefit a lot from the 4K update when it arrives. When it's available, we'll post another clip to show the differences.
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Hixbot - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
The gaming scenarios that are currently locked at 30fps are CPU bound, they cannot reach 60fps because of the CPU.Samus - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
CPU and core count are unimportant for DirectX 12 games. Microsoft would have likely been happy to go with 4 cores to give them even more GPU real estate in Xbox One X, but they had to keep it backwards compatible and that would have been severely ruined by doing so.I don't understand why the original PS4/Xbox One were 8-core CPU's...it's been pretty obvious for at least a decade that GPU's are more critical to graphics, and since both consoles were effectively built during the DX12-era which was pushing even further away from CPU limitations...it seems Microsoft in particular went 8-core just to appear "on paper" competitive with the PS4. Yet another mistake to add to the list of f-up's on the Xbox One.
I passed this whole generation. The PS3/Xbox 360 were really the last revolutionary consoles. I spent this generation focusing on PC gaming, and I don't regret it.
Hixbot - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
There is most certainly a CPU bottleneck if 60fps is the target.Rufnek - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
@SamusYou are spitting non-sense. Your comments would ring true for pretty much everything up to 2015. Thankfully Sony & M$ were looking further out than your experiences. CPU need to have a lot of cores running at high speeds. At best, they need to tackle all the other parts that the GPU doesn't. At worst, the CPU needs to overlap and assist the GPU. AC: Origins is one of the prime examples.
As for CPU cores...there is a reason Intel is now trying to catch up to AMD on the # of cores. Expect a lot of software companies to following gaming devs in cpu core utilizations. More cores = better.
tipoo - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Imagine if people got GPU mining going on consoles, we'd never get those either lolSamus - Friday, November 3, 2017 - link
Shhhhhh. ;)dguy6789 - Sunday, November 5, 2017 - link
Well, considering that a regular Xbox One or PS4 runs games significantly better than a $500 PC, I would imagine the X would compare extremely favorably.xenol - Monday, November 6, 2017 - link
Every time I see a comparison being made, a few things get left behind that make me think the comparison is not fair. For instance, I see people omitting the BD drive, which I find makes the comparison pointless. Gaming consoles aren't just for gaming, at least on the Sony and Microsoft camp. They're trying to be a complete entertainment system. So you can't just pick and choose which features you want and keep the same budget for comparison's sake.Silma - Tuesday, November 7, 2017 - link
During the conference call for the last quarter, Microsoft warned investors that the Xbox One X would weigh on its financial results next quarter.So basically Microsoft doesn't make a dime on it. I doubt you'll find a better deal on a PC.
jai_86 - Monday, December 24, 2018 - link
If you want to play Halo, Gears of War, Forza or Crackdown, pretty well.