The Xbox Series X Review: Ushering In The Next Generation of Game Consoles
by Brett Howse on November 5, 2020 9:00 AM ESTGameplay Analysis: The Wolf Among Us
Although a cell-shaded game like The Wolf Among Us, created by Telltale games, may not seem like a particularly taxing game to test on the Xbox One X and the Xbox Series X, this PC port is actually quite demanding on the consoles, with the Xbox One and Xbox One X both exhibiting stuttering and framerate drops. So, why not see how the more powerful Series X can handle it?
Although both consoles were not able to maintain 60 FPS 100% of the time, the Xbox One X most definitely had more frame time jumps, and lowered framerate more often.
Looking at this scene, the Xbox Series X does drop the framerate slightly, but far less than the Xbox One X, and without quite as large of a frame time spike either.
This happens quite often, with the Xbox One X running into a wall much more often and with more of an impact than the more powerful Series X.
Although the framerate of The Wolf Among Us is not a key to the gameplay, it does keep you immersed, and frame time spikes can really jar the eye as a sudden hitch in the game. Telltale games clearly did not do a great job porting this to the console, but it does give is a good chance to see where the new console can improve the gameplay of an older title.
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lefenzy - Monday, November 9, 2020 - link
Both MS and Sony consoles are very impressive. How do they manage to put 8-core zen 2 plus high-end graphics and solid state storage into a $500 console? Are both manufacturers losing money on each unit?Sub31 - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
Yes- consoles are loss leaders.versesuvius - Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - link
"solid-stage storage" ?madseven7 - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link
tell me a phone with 16GB of ram, AI, that can play at 2k on a 65" screenAlexvrb - Wednesday, November 11, 2020 - link
"a much smaller 4 TFLOP GPU, which is not even as powerful as the Xbox One X from 2017"Technically the final performance is roughly equal. 4 RDNA2 TFLOPS is comparable to 6 GCN2 TFLOPS. The problem is the reduced total memory means for CURRENT titles, they have to run an upscaled version of the Xbox One S game.
For new titles specifically built with the Series S in mind (and possibly existing titles with a major update), they can use the SSD and DirectStorage to produce titles with graphics at least on par with what a One X can do. The Zen 2 cores are also a massive improvement over the ancient Jaguar cores.
vol.2 - Friday, November 13, 2020 - link
There are obviously no more game consoles. But this "generation" is significant in that it is overtly marketed as incremental upgrades. I guess the switch is still pretending with it's in-between size and semi-portability, but there isn't anywhere Nintendo can go from there. Either they continue to upgrade the switch and make the form-factor their differentiator, or they do the same thing as Sony and MS and just overtly make and sell computers that are simply locked into their own game title ecosystem.CoderScribe - Saturday, November 28, 2020 - link
Great review, please now do PS5, since that's what most of us will actually be playing and has more interesting architectural quirks for analysis.