Xbox One X promises a strong and stable line-up

[Administrator]

The Xbox One X is going to be a beast. Amazing specs. Amazing look. Amazing tech chatter, a lot of which went over my head. It's built around power, compatibility, and craftsmanship, according to Kareem Choudhry, Xbox Director of Software Engineering, on stage at Microsoft's E3 press briefing, and somehow, it's a magic trick too, because it fits in the smallest box - the smallest Xbox - Microsoft has ever offered. Just look at how powerfully dinky this thing is, like an elephant squeezed into a service elevator. A controller leans insouciantly against one edge of it, and that insouciant controller pretty much towers over the machine. True 4K textures! True 4K assets! Enhanced visual fidelity, isotropic filtering and faster load times on the games you already own! Enough of this blather. Kareem is a man in a hurry. Let's see, he says, what this monster can do.
It can do cars, for one thing. Forza Motorsport 7 looks lovely: sharp and clear, the cars nice and shiny with all of it running at 4K and 60 fps on Xbox One X. But is Forza really the best way to introduce a console that is meant to blow you away? Is Dan Greenawalt banging on about a new Porsche really the strain of hype this behemoth deserves? I was more excited when Choudhry announced the new box had a new power management system so innovative that they named it after the person who designed it. That showed, you know, a bit of character. A bit of quirk. A little bit of humanity glinting from within the silicon.
All of which is to say that, in one way, Microsoft did almost everything right at E3 this year. New hardware priced and dated - $499 and it's out November 7th. Rich Leadbetter's seen it, and he's delighted by what he's seen. Choudhry and Phil Spencer both seemed to have nothing but good things to say for it. And the games? The show, once again, was all games. Wall to wall games. 42 of them, 22 with console exclusivity on Xbox One - or maybe that was console launch exclusivity. And many of the games seem great. So why is the whole thing just a tiny bit underwhelming?
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