Xbox Series X Price, Release Date, Games, Specs, and News

Everything we know about Xbox Series X, including latest news, release date, specs, price, games, and much more!

ByMatthew Byrd,John Saavedra|March 16, 2020||Comments count:0Photo: Xbox

Microsoft has revealed the name of the next Xbox. Previously known as Xbox Scarlett, the new console is called the Xbox Series X. According to the company, the Xbox Series X is designed to be Microsoft’s “fastest, most powerful console ever.” You can see an image of the console above, as revealed during 2019 Game Awards. For those wondering, while the console was first unveiled in an upright position, the Xbox Series X will support “both vertical and horizontal orientation.”

The Xbox Series X will also be compatible with “thousands of your favorite games across four generations of gaming, all your Xbox One gaming accessories, and industry-leading services like Xbox Game Pass.” Additionally, Microsoft is ensuring that first-party titles from Xbox Game Studios “support cross-generation entitlements and that your Achievements and game saves are shared across devices.”

The console will come with a new Xbox Wireless Controller, which looks very much like the Xbox One peripheral but with a few tweeks, including “a new Share button to make capturing screenshots and game clips simple and an advanced d-pad derived from the Xbox Elite Series 2 Wireless Controller.” The controller will also be compatible with Xbox One and PC!

The first reports of the Xbox Series X suggested that it was one of two next-gen consoles that Microsoft is working on. The other is reportedly called Lockhart and is supposedly being positioned as a budget next-gen console that won’t feature a disc drive (similar to the Xbox One S: All Digital Edition). That leaves the Series X as the premium powerhouse of Xbox’s next-gen plans.

While Microsoft hasn’t confirmed all of the Xbox Series X’s specs, we know that the console feature a new enhancements that should improve the gaming experience, such as the addition of an SSD to eliminate load times. It’s a safe bet that the Xbox Series X will also utilize Microsoft’s xCloud service so that you can take your games anywhere.

Bethesda’s Todd Howard spoke briefly about what he’s seen of Xbox Series X and PS5, and he noted that neither company has “screwed up” its next-gen plans as of this time. Considering that Microsoft infamously botched the Xbox One debut with its controversial policies, Xbox fans should be glad to hear that the company isn’t making the same mistakes this time around.

Here’s everything else we know about Xbox Series X:

Xbox Series X Release Date

Microsoft confirmed that the Xbox Series X will release in Holiday 2020.

Xbox Series X Specs

Here are the full specs for the Xbox Series X as confirmed by Microsoft:

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
I/O 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

A major new feature of the Xbox Series X will be ray tracing — a dynamic way of rendering lighting, shadows, and reflections that makes game graphics look more realistic than ever before. This will allow Microsoft to render graphics like never before on Xbox.

According to Eurogamer, the Xbox Series X is also able to add HDR effects to even older backward compatible titles that weren’t designed with HDR in mind. This means that your games of Jet Set Radio Future and Brute Force should look all the more impressive running on the new console.

Another exciting feature is the console’s Quick Resume function, which allows players to turn off their consoles during a game session and then boot right back to the point in the game where they left off. This is, of course, possible by the faster processes of the console’s SSD storage. Speaking of SSD, Microsoft and Seagate have designed an external SSD memory card that can expand your console’s storage by 1TB.

Microsoft is also curating a list of Xbox One titles that will receive upgrades for the Xbox Series X. As far as that goes, a new feature called Smart Delivery will allow you to upgrade your Xbox One copy of a game to the Xbox Series X for free. Basically, you’ll now only have to buy one copy of the game instead of having to buy a remastered Xbox Series X version.

If you’re wondering about the size of the console, This Is Guy’s Austin Evans has posted a size comparison photo on Twitter that should be helpful in that regard:

Xbox Series X Price

There’s no official word on the Xbox Series X’s price, but there are some indications of what price range it may fall into. If Microsoft really does release a budget, disc-free, next-gen Xbox (aka Lockhart), then that will probably retail for about $300-$350 depending on its hardware. Xbox Series X, meanwhile, will likely retail for about $400-$450 and will be marketed as a premium device similar to how Microsoft approached the Xbox One X.

The general idea with Series X vs. its rumored budget alternative is that Microsoft will likely use the budget option to heavily push Game Pass and xCloud in order to get people on-board with what seems to be the future of the company’s games branch and perhaps the future of gaming itself.