Xbox Series X – First Impressions

Being that I’ve owned an Xbox Series X for a little over 24 hours now, I think that is enough to justify myself as an expert. But seriously, first impressions mean a lot, especially in the world of tech, so for those that are cautiously sitting back and wanting to see some feedback before deciding whether or not they need a new console during these tough times, allow me to provide you with some of my early likes and dislikes.

Quick Resume

Quick Resume is a feature that I honestly paid little to no attention to heading into this launch, and thus far, it is the thing that has impressed me the most.

The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One both allowed you to put your console into safe mode while playing a game and allowing you to hop right back into it once you turned the console back on. It was a neat feature that mostly worked, but Quick Resume is that turned up to eleven. From the Xbox menu, I can click on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and it will instantly launch me back into that game from where I last left off. No bootup sequences, no title screens, and no loading. Say you want to rage quit out of Valhalla and hop into NBA 2K21. Quick Resume will pop you right into the last game that you were in. It feels like so sort of sorcery. I am sure that there is a limit to how many games that the Xbox can keep your place in at one time, but if there is, I have not been able to find it. I have tried a wide array of games. Xbox titles, 360 titles, games on disk, and new releases. It was so quick that it was nearly instant.  

Thus far, it’s the one thing that I have come across that feels like a real game-changer.

Game Sizes

Hard to fault anyone for this, but it has been an early pain in the ass regardless. The good news is that download speeds are so much better on the Series X. The bad news: These games are huge. NBA 2K21 Next-Gen is over 100 GB’s itself, and that’s without any patches. I can only imagine what Call of Duty is going to be. When you have games that are over 100 GB’s, not only are you going to have to think about hard-drive space (Mine is already ¾’s full in just 24 hours) but it’s also going to be a big hurdle for those that have data caps.

Controller

I’m not sure if I like the new standard Xbox controller or not. For the most part, Microsoft didn’t mess around with what was working for them, so it’s essentially the same as last generations aside from the new share button, but there’s a clickiness with the d-pad that I’m not liking. I was playing Tetris Connected earlier today, and the loud clicks from the controller’s d-pad were detrimental to the experience.

That said, the bottom of the controller is now textured, and it feels much better in hand than the controllers of old.

The Speed

So much has been made of the SSD’s in the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, but it’s not until you see it firsthand that you can appreciate it.  The Quick Resume feature that I mentioned above is the best example of its power, but it’s very obvious in the user experience. Guiding menus is an absolute breeze. There’s no lag; there’s no waiting for things to load; it’s as fluid as I have ever seen. In games, it’s incredible. Take Assassin’s Creed Valhalla for example: Regardless of the Assassin’s Creed game that you’re playing or that machine that you’re playing it on, the loading screens—the ones where you’re in an empty void, running around while you’re waiting for the game to load—gets frustrating after a while. Especially when you die in those games. At their worst, you’re sometimes looking at that screen for a few minutes. With Assassin’s Creed Valhalla—the largest and most intensive game in the series yet—you see that screen for a couple of seconds.

The last time that I had that loading screen, I tried to pan around Eivor to see what kind of armor that I had equipped but the game loaded before I could fully get around him. In another example, I popped in WWE 2K19 and—a game that hasn’t been optimized for the new consoles—and was blown away by the speed from menu to menu. After choosing a match and hitting “confirm,” instead of hearing Michael Cole and Corey Graves spending 30-40 seconds telling me about the upcoming matchup, the game instantly cut to the entrances.

Ray Tracing

I feel like ray tracing is this generation’s HDR in that it’s a buzzword that developers and journalists are throwing around but that most gamers don’t really understand. Hell, I’m one of them. I know what ray tracing is, but I don’t know that I understand the significance. That is until I saw ray tracing for the first time. Like HDR before it, ray tracing pops into your game and adds another dimension to the experience that submerges a little further.

For the first 2-3 hours of AC: Valhalla, your clan of Vikings are settled in Norway. It’s cold, it’s snowy, and it’s dreary. When your clan packs up and prepares to go raid England, there is a moment that you go from the blues and whites of Norway to the golden tones of England that can leave you speechless. And as the sun traces the tops of distant trees, the beams of light begin to hit you in ways that you have never experienced. The light bounces off the surface of the water and you get a mirror image of the sun itself. If this is what is to come from ray tracing, you might what to start smashing that share button so that it’s programmed into your muscle memory.

Launch Lineups

Shitty console lineups are nothing new, but the Xbox Series X | S lineup is one of the most sparse that I’ve seen yet. Granted, Halo Infinite being delayed had a lot to do with this, but it’s still no excuse. Microsoft better be sending a nice Christmas card to Ubisoft this year because had it not been for the enhanced versions of Assassin’s Creed and Watch Dogs: Legion, there would be a lot of $500 paperweights out there. I’m a bit fortunate in that I didn’t play my Xbox One much, so with Game Pass, I’m getting to go back and play games like Forza and Gears 5 for the first time. But if you’re someone that has already played those and you’re not into Ubisoft’s open-world titles, I honestly don’t know what the hell you’re doing with your Xbox right now.

It’s only 24 hours, but I can say that, from a hardware perspective, the Xbox Series X delivers big time. I