Gadgetory

- The Xbox One X is officially one year old, and we're gonna talk about what has changed in that past year, how well it's been selling, and how it stacks up against its chief rival, the PS4 Pro. (upbeat electronic music) - [Voiceover] So, do you have any smack talk for people who are buying an Xbox One and why Sony's better? - You're wasting your time (laughs). - When the One X was first released, the really big push for Microsoft is that this is the most powerful console ever made. If you just looked at the specs you'd be a fan. That was definitely the case. I mean, it had a lot more power than the PS4 Pro. When it came to games that were coming out that holiday season, we were seeing results where the One X versions were running better at higher native resolutions and often times offering more graphical strengths. But seeing things on a spec sheet don't always translate to real life practice. As time goes on, some things can happen where dibs might handicap a version of the game because they want console parity, or maybe it's just they made one version that works equally well on each system. Thankfully, that really hasn't been the case for the One X at all. Over the last year, we've seen a lot of big name, AAA titles come out on both the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X, and time and time again the One X is the crisper, better looking version. With examples like, Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Call of Duty Black Ops 4, Rise of the Tomb Raider, and most recently, and probably most importantly Red Dead Redemption 2. The PS4 Pro versions can't get close with things like advanced upscaling techniques like checkerboarding. But, at the end of the day, the Xbox One X has a higher native resolution, resulting in a crisper image, and often times games will also include different graphical improvements, like better draw distances or higher quality shadows. Now, raw power alone is cool, but something that I really did like about the One X at launch versus the PS4 Pro, is that I feel like Microsoft has put a lot of effort into improving the user experience in the system, and that's something that has improved as well over the past year. They've pushed a number of updates that have improved the wide, add more customization control for the user, as well as making things just easier to navigate. And, they've made a lot of changes to the adaptability of the system to work in a much larger range of setups, including support for 120 hertz monitors, fortune 40p resolution, and even supports freezing, which mostly works with monitor setups, but there are Nano Samsung TVs that also use this technology to give you a much smoother looking frame rate experience on the Xbox One X. Microsoft's also been pushing a lot of products and updates to help make sure the system is more accessible to a larger number of gamers, including the adaptive controller, which makes it a lot easier to use the system with different physical disabilities, a narrator for the Xbox One, which is now available in a lot more languages for people that have vision impairments. This is even reflected in their new avatar system, where people can make avatars of themselves featuring different impairments, like being in a wheelchair. All of this is great, and I think it's really what's helped meld the Xbox One X into really being the best gaming console when it comes to just its hardware and software. That has reflected a bit in sales, where while Microsoft hasn't really talked specific numbers anymore, it does look as though the One X has been improving sales for Microsoft in general, but still not quite enough to compete with other systems. A large reason for that is the one weakness of the system, exclusives. While the One X has made itself the go-to system for multi-platform games to get the best visual experience possible, when it comes to unique and exclusive games on it, things have still been pretty slow. Over the last year, we've basically only had three big name exclusive titles come out on the One X, including State of Decay 2 and Sea of Thieves, both good games, but neither which has really had an explosion of popularity enough to really justify them as console pushers. The third title is Forza Horizon 4, which is a really good game, honestly, I think it's the best one in the franchise and really worth playing, but at this point anyone who's a Forza fan has probably already picked up an Xbox One. It's not getting new people into the system. Now, with that said, I think this is something that Microsoft is acutely aware of and is something they want to change in the coming future, but its not happening just quite yet. I think they've tried pushing toward this idea a lot at last E3, where I think they were really trying to make three big points clear. First off, Xbox One X is the system you should go to for multi-platform games. Ending their E3 conference with Cyberpunk 2077 coming from the same studio that made Witcher 3, which was a huge success, they're sending the message, hey, everyone's gonna wanna play this game, and One X is gonna be the place to do it. Two, they announced a number of exclusives for big name franchises they've already established, like Halo Infinite and Gears of War 5. And three, most importantly, they announced a lot of new studios. What's more interesting to me is that they've also acquired Compulsion, who's responsible for We Happy Few, and Ninja Theory, who's made a lot of really interesting, beautiful games, and could do some really cool stuff for Microsoft. And, if recent rumors turn out to be true, they could also be acquiring one of my personal favorite developers, Obsidian Entertainment, responsible for some of the best RPGs in recent years. While none of these acquisitions solve the immediate problem and give us games right here, right now today, it shows that Microsoft is investing in future ideas. And, another year from now, we might start to see a lot of really cool, really awesome exclusive games down the road. So, that being the current state of the Xbox One X, what is next for Microsoft? What is the future of the Xbox? Looking at a lot of the stuff they've been doing the past year or two, and also they've talked about in recent press conferences, I really feel like they're moving towards the idea of Xbox no longer being a set of hardware, but instead, Xbox as a service. I mean really, look at a lot of stuff we've been focusing on lately. At E3, one of the things they talked about was the idea of focusing on game streaming, bringing it to other devices so you can play Xbox games on things like your phone. - Our cloud engineers are building a game streaming network to unlock console-quality gaming on any device. - Recently, they revealed concepts for a controller adapter that'll work with phones, and even tested the idea of Xbox All Access, a program where instead of just buying Xbox for a set price amount right out the gate, you can instead pay in installments over time, where you pay for the services like Xbox Live Gold and Xbox Game Pass, and at the same time you're paying off this controller in small fees over time. So, the idea could be that, down the line, instead of being something where you just buy a system, maybe you're just buying a stream box. Or, maybe you are buying hardware you can use in your home, but you're paying for over time and accessing this large library of games. I mean, it's even evident by the way they have approached the idea of backwards compatibility. While Nintendo and Playstation are focusing on releasing old games through other side retro consoles, or doing different special programs, Microsoft does approach the idea of, hey, you bought this one system, this one box, and we'll try to get it to be able to play all the 360 games you liked, all the original Xbox games you liked, and of course, all the Xbox One stuff too. I think Xbox made something really special with the Xbox One X, and while things have been a little rough as far as the first party games go, I think they've got a really interesting and bright future ahead that I want to see shaped. And, we might get some more insights into that soon. They're doing a new Xbox event this weekend, in just a few days, and I'm really curious to see what, if anything, new gets announced.