News 22 September 2020
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Author: Seth P

Everything you need to know about Xbox Series X

22 September 2020
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The next gen console war is finally upon us. November will be seven years since we first laid our eyes on the PS4 and Xbox One. Since then, they’ve been mainstays in our living rooms, providing us with endless hours of entertainment and escapism.

November the 10th will see the dawn of a new age, with the release of Microsoft’s long awaited Xbox Series X. The console will retail at £449 which will likely include a wireless controller and a free trial for Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. If that is too steep, Microsoft have got you covered.

The Xbox Series S is £200 cheaper, coming in at £249. The performance of the Series S is scaled down slightly however, it won’t be able to run games in 4k, it won’t have a disc drive and the storage wont be as big as the Series X, but still a meaty 512GB.

XBox Series X Specs:

CPU 8x Zen 2 Cores at 3.8GHz (3.6GHz with SMT)
GPU 12 TFLOPs, 52 CUs at 1.825GHz, Custom RDNA 2
Die Size 360.45mm2
Process TSMC 7nm Enhanced
Memory 16GB GDDR6
Memory Bandwidth 10GB at 560GB/s, 6GB at 336GB/s
Internal Storage 1TB Custom NVMe SSD
IO Throughput 2.4GB/s (Raw), 4.8GB/s (Compressed)
Expandable Storage 1TB Expansion Card
External Storage USB 3.2 HDD Support
Optical Drive 4K UHD Blu-ray Drive
Performance Target 4K at 60fps – up to 120fps


Xbox Series S Specs:

CPU: Eight-core 3.6GHz (3.4GHz with SMT) custom AMD 7nm.

GPU: 4 teraflops at 1.550GHz.

RAM: 10GB GDDR6.

Frame rate: Up to 120 fps.

Resolution: 1440p with 4K upscaling.

Optical: No disk drive.

Storage: 512GB NVMe SSD.

The pre orders for both consoles went live today, and Microsoft are making both consoles available to purchase through the Xbox All Access finance program. It comes complete with 24 months subscription to Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, and best of all there is no up front cost. Which means you can dive into next gen gaming for as little as £20.99 a month for the Series S and £28.99 a month for the Series X. 

Although Microsoft are taking a slightly different route with regards to exclusive launch games, there are certainly some great titles that we can look forward to in the months after release. With the likes of Fable, Halo Infinite, State of Decay 3, Forza Motorsport, Everwild and Avowed to name a few! 


Xbox Game Pass Ultimate:

The souped up version of Xbox Live Gold. The new service sees a marriage of Xbox Live Gold with Game Pass. The result is Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which is basically a Netflix style subscription service for games! The service features 100s of great games for both PC and Xbox.

With Microsofts recent acquisition of Bethesda, this could mean plenty more sick titles being made available on the service. The Xbox Game Pass Ultimate also gets you access to EA Play Games, which obviously has a heap of great historic titles, as well as the coveted, yet much loathed FIFA franchise, now you wont have to worry about shelling out £50 every year for meagre updates!

Weigh up your options before you make your purchase, check out our comprehensive PS5 guide right here.