MS and shipping partners are trying to avoid bottlenecks. Imagine shipping all of them on the same day? That would eat up lots of loading dock time and capacity. Get them in the system early, distribute them, and put them on hold at the final facilities.
Pretty good and honest initial review of Series X/S.
In addition to the answer youāve already seen, I think there are a couple more considerations.
- Size (not what you think!). Most PC games have UI and text sizes suitable for sitting 2-3 feet from a monitor. On Xbox the assumption is you are 6+ feet from a TV. Font and UI are typically larger. There are a growing number of games which let you adjust this on PC (and Xbox) but itās still noticeable.
- You can pick up the Xbox controller and just start playing.
- The loading times are optimized on Xbox in a way that PCs arenāt doing yet.
- Microsoft wonāt have Xbox exclusives - theyāll be on PC. Nothing prevents a developer from shipping for Xbox earlier or exclusively though. Tetris Effect: Connected is an example of a timed exclusive for Xbox Series. Orphan of the Machine is an Xbox Series full exclusive - no PC version announced.
Thraeg
2935
Also worth considering:
- Multiplayer community health: This is dependent on the game of course, but earlier this year I picked up Soulcalibur VI for a while. On PC, where I started out, it would often sit looking for a match for 5+ minutes at a time, and when one came along, it was almost invariably with someone in the top rank with thousands of matches played, and I was lucky to get a hit in. Tried the same game on Xbox, and usually had a match within 30 seconds, and the opponents were more in the dozens or hundreds of matches range (i.e. I still usually lost, but it was nowhere near as one-sided).
- It makes a much more convenient and easy-to-use media center for non-techies. The Xbox lives in the family room and is the hub for video streaming for everybody in the family. Itās set up to turn on the TV and audio receiver when the system powers on, and it has a nice remote that can even pass along volume changes to the receiver, and is much easier for my wife and kids to use than a media PC would be.
And apropos of kids and Xbox:
God, that makes every original Xbox owner feel old.
I want to hear someone say how fast it takes to swap an XS* game from external SSD (non-proprietary) to internal SSD. If I can keep my 3 or so most likely to play games on the XSS internal and swap 1 or 2 as needed without much hassle Iām fine with the 360GB and not buying a proprietary card.
I havenāt seen that mentioned yet though.
Iām pretty sure someone has done that test. Itās in one of the many previews; canāt remember which one.
Dejin
2939
Good call, I hadnāt thought of that. Another related issue thatās come up a bunch of times with my gaming crew, Console seems to have less cheating problems.
I tried again just now and it updated to show it is arriving by 8 pm on Tuesday. I guess my order was just further down the pecking order.
Dejin
2941
That was a great video. I passed it on to a friend that Iāve been gaming with since the original Xbox days who now has a toddler and he responded āIām tearing up.ā
Added bonus, he didnāt manage to snag a pre-order, so hopefully heāll be able to snag one from them on Launch Day. At least it confirms our suspicions that there will be retailers with a second round available on November 10th.
Digital foundry has an extensive video on using different external HDs with Series X.
Main take away I believe was a good SATA SSD was the best price/performance option for backing up games. Also Xbox One and 360 games run fine straight from one too.
Digital Foundry did that on an earlier preview when they compared the BC game loading times on various media.
Dejin
2946
Thanks @Thraeg, that looks pretty doable. I repurposed one of my old Desktop 1TB SSDs to a USB drive when I upgraded the Desktop to 2TB and Iāve been using it on the Xbox One. Those numbers look fast enough to forgo the official 1TB and just transfer back and forth using my less sophisticated SSD for long term storage and transferring the games onto the internal SSD as needed. If the price comes down, or they up it to 2TB, I might reconsider.
Digital Foundry recommended this SSD USB converter here, as the best on the market for use with the Xbox Series X, but itās out of stock ā possibly due to Digital Foundryās recommendation. [Edit: looks like itās back in stock now!]. So I ended up getting this to connect the SSD. Same manufacturer, but USB 3.0 instead of USB 3.1.
So far, itās worked pretty well for me.
Yeah, the series X/S USB ports max out at 550/MB/s so thereās no advantage in going for nvme based external drives.
Thanks all, hadnāt realized DF did an analysis of it. Those times donāt seem too terrible to me
Oh crap, I just realized that next Wednesday, November 11 is Veteranās Day and I have the day off! Hereās hoping that Xbox gets to me on time!
Razgon
2950
Thanks all - you all raise good points, that I hadnāt thought about.
I actually WANT to get one. I just wasnāt sure why I should get one, this time around, so this pleases me :-)
I finally got charged for my MS Store XSX this afternoon. ITāS HAPPENING!
Ex-SWoo
2952
I tried re-updating my Amazon status to see what happens it looks like itās now on for next Thurs! I guess Amazon got a new shipment in the past day or so - might be worth re-checking if youāre waiting too.
