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Is this just too good to be true? After a Microsoft media briefing with so many spectacular moments, we couldn't help but wonder. As the briefing progressed, new Xbox One X titles arrived thick and fast, the majority promising 4K visuals with high dynamic range rendering - a target that has proved a touch elusive for PlayStation 4 Pro. But some of the major reveals went further - they showed us a level of visual accomplishment we hadn't seen before, in addition to that stratospherically high 4K resolution. The more we watched, the more we began to wonder: can the reality of Xbox One X match what we were shown? Perhaps more pertinently, how much of what was shown was actually running on Microsoft's new hardware? How much was authentic, dare we say it, real?In at least a couple of respects, Xbox One X defies the norms set by current-gen hardware. Even the form factor of the machine challenges belief: had pictures of the unit leaked in the weeks leading up to E3, there's a strong chance that they would have been dismissed as an elaborate fake - but it is real, and even better in the flesh. The small, discrete unit you first saw in a flash, glitzy rendered sequence, we first saw at the end of March, at the tail-end of the Project Scorpio hardware deep dive we've previously reported on. After Leo Del Castille, general manager of the Xbox hardware team, constructed a console in front of us, we were directed to two Xbox One consoles - the initial set-top box model, and its S successor. It turned out that the OG model was simply an empty shell, which was lifted off to reveal the tiny Scorpio console.
Frankly, it was a brilliant piece of theatre - and we had wondered whether Microsoft would repeat the trick on stage. Side-by-side with the Xbox One S, it's instantly apparent that the new X is actually smaller, despite its enormous increase in performance - and it's the final flourish of craftsmanship on a beautiful piece of kit. And there's a nice story surrounding that Xbox One fake shell; beta testers of the console taking their machines home were compelled to hide their prototype Scorpio hardware under the empty casing, to ensure that the chances of inadvertent leaks were kept to a minimum.
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