So what’s in the black box? Here are the key specs and features of the Xbox Series X:
Xbox Series X packs a huge 12 teraflops under the hood - four times the processing power and graphics grunt of the Xbox One X according to Microsoft.
Not sure what a Teraflop is? @HeyImNatalia makes it super clear in this bite-sized video: What is Teraflop?
Check out our evolving Gamer Explainer video series where we translate gamer speak into everyday language.
The CPU is the brain of the new Xbox hard drive and the GPU is the heart – and they’ve both gotten a solid upgrade for the Series X release. It’s Microsoft’s fastest, most powerful gaming console ever with 12 teraflops of GPU performance delivering a new level of visual fidelity and immersion with native 4K gaming at up to 120 frames per second.
It also means reduced load times AND the ability to support ray tracing capabilities. More on that later…
The upgraded SSD is a very big deal because when it comes to gaming, the hard drive is where the rubber hits the road. And you’re going to hit the road considerably faster with the Xbox Series X. We haven’t seen load times like this before.
But it’s also about the whole experience being more seamless and more real. When it comes to gaming, power equals speed equals performance – and the sheer power and speed of Xbox Velocity Architecture powered by a custom SSD delivers big improvements in real-world play on the Series X.
The big game changers with the Xbox Series X are the latency and frame rates. The new Solid State Drive, or SSD – essentially a super-efficient hard drive with no moving parts - promises to load data considerably faster and more reliably than anything you’ve played on before.
You’ll be looking at improved transitions between levels, more detailed graphics, and far more realistic and immersive experiences on whatever game you’re into.
The Xbox Series X power boost extends to the graphics, with improvements to everything from the way that games can resume from sleep, to the smoothness and loading times of open world games to the way that elements like light, water, wind and smoke look and move on screen.
On top of that is the hardware support for Direct X Ray tracing, a graphics game changer.
Ray tracing is the next level of realism in gaming. It involves tracking the way light bounces around a virtual environment and rendering it, emulating the way we see light in the real world. It’s used in animated movies, and now it’s set to become the new normal in gaming.
Xbox Series X has next-generation ray tracing rendering support, and as more games come out that support ray tracing’s amazingly realistic lightplay too, it’s going to be hard to go back.
With the Storage Expansion Card for Xbox Series X you get an additional 1TB of external memory and you can still maintain the same peak performance of the internal SSD. It's sold separately.
The Xbox Series X design definitely sets it apart from other consoles. While the competition is going slim, sleek and small, the new Xbox is like a big black sentinel standing head and shoulders above the crowd.
This extra-large tower of power may be a nod back to Microsoft’s gaming PC roots… but in reality, it's less about aesthetics and more about the custom-made innovations - from the chimney-stack top vent to the layered processor setup that give the Series X the chops to outgun its rivals in the inevitable matchups to come.
Watch the Xbox Series X unboxing and hands-on preview.
The player-first ergonomic design of the Wireless Controller has been given an upgrade for Series X, with some really handy additions;
The new Xbox Wireless Controller will work on Windows PCs as well as mobile phones, just like the current controller. And you’ll be able to use almost all existing Xbox One accessories on the Xbox Series X, so there's no need to ditch specialty gear that you already own.
