Xbox One X: Everything We Learned At The Xbox Press Briefing

Xbox One X
(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft officially unveiled the Xbox One X at this year's E3 2017 press conference. The console is hailed as the smallest and most powerful console that Microsoft has made, and the release date, price, and name were all unveiled during the event. The Xbox One X is coming November 7th, 2017 for $499.99.

During the conference, we learned that the Xbox Scorpio is actually known as the Xbox One X. The name is very similar to the Xbox One S, but the upcoming console is more powerful, sleeker, and far more functionally capable than its Xbox One predecessors.

Microsoft rolled through the specs of the Xbox One X, which is running hardware capable of 6 teraflops with 326GB/s, and a new vapor chamber for the cooling to ensure that the CPU and GPU run as smooth, as quietly and as cool as possible without slowdown, overheating or struggling to keep pace with the games it's running. The rest of the specs are available over on the official XBOX website.

One of the big selling points for the Xbox One X is that it plays all previous Xbox One games without any problems, and you can use your old peripherals, your accessories, and your old data.

Just like the PS4 Pro, the Xbox One X will offer gamers the ability access to all the existing eighth-gen content but with the added benefits of 4K and 60fps gaming.

The console is not only capable of running games at native 4K, but it also supports HDR, and a feature to help give those who don't have 4K televisions some visual benefits through supersampling.

Supersampling works similar to anti-aliasing, increasing the pixel clarity on non-4K televisions by increasing the quality of the image output even for 1080p or 1440p televisions.

As far as exclusive software is concerned, Microsoft has more than 40 titles planned for release across the Xbox consoles, with 22 of those games being Xbox exclusives. This was definitely one of the biggest worries a lot of people had about the Xbox One X because Microsoft hasn't been the most dedicated when it comes to console exclusives.

So apparently exclusivity is something Microsoft is addressing, especially after they canceled Scalebound, much to the disgust and disgruntlement of the Xbox gaming community.

Microsoft, however, plans on making sure that there's an ample line-up of new games that take advantage of the new console's hardware.

Another major concern was the price of the console, but so long as Microsoft delivers on the games and the exclusivity, this could easily justify the price of the home console. With games like Crackdown 3 and a slew of fairly innovative and interesting new games set to arrive on the Xbox One, Xbox One S and Xbox One X.

The only thing they may need to watch out for is the marketing for the game. Nintendo ran into a problem of people not knowing what the Wii U was because they thought that it was an accessory add-on for the Wii. So long as Microsoft can avoid that blunder with the Xbox One X (especially given that it's very close in name to the Xbox One S), they should be okay.

Will Usher

Staff Writer at CinemaBlend.