We’re only a couple of months away from the big unveiling of Microsoft’s next console, the Xbox Series X. Today, Xbox’s Phil Spencer lifted the curtain a little more. It’s not a full unveil, but we do get the headline number of 12 Teraflops.
Next-gen graphics will be powered by “our custom-designed processor leveraging AMD’s latest Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures,” Spencer writes.
The 12 Teraflops is double the processing power of the Xbox One X and more than eight times the original Xbox One. So yeah, games are going to look nuts. If that Hellblade 2 trailer from a couple of months ago ends up delivering graphics like that, we’ll get plenty of ‘holy shit’ moments later this year and beyond.
It’s the feature set Spencer expanded on that excites me the most for the next Xbox. The new Quick Resume feature lets you suspend multiple games and pick up right where you left off, without waiting through the initial boot of the game. Of course, that should be even less of a wait too with an SSD packed inside the box.
120 fps support combined with Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) is also going to be a huge deal. We’ll see how developers balance pushing consoles to the limit while also aiming for a higher frame rate. I’m crossing my fingers 60 fps becomes the norm for all games with others pushing it higher.
Spencer also touched on a feature called ‘Smart Delivery’ that seems to suggest there will be substantial differences in games depending on what hardware you’re playing it on. I imagine it’s something like better texture packs or higher frame rate modes to take advantage of the stronger hardware. Plus, you’ll only have to buy the game once. The days of buying a cross-gen game twice are over.
“This technology empowers you to buy a game once and know that – whether you are playing it on Xbox One or Xbox Series X – you are getting the right version of that game on whatever Xbox you’re playing on. We’re making the commitment to use Smart Delivery on all our exclusive Xbox Game Studios titles, including Halo Infinite, ensuring you only have to purchase a title once in order to play the best available version for whichever Xbox console they choose to play on. This technology is available for all developers and publishers, and they can choose to use it for titles that will be release on Xbox One first and come to the Xbox Series X later.”
Spencer reiterated that all first-party games come to Xbox Game Pass at launch with Halo Infinite hitting the service on day one.
Check out the rest of Spencer’s post on Xbox Wire to learn everything we know right now about the Xbox Series X ahead of what is sure to be a big event at E3.