Microsoft officially announced the Xbox One X, previously known as Project Scorpio, at the E3 show earlier this month. The console, the most powerful in the world, delivers true 4K gaming. It won’t hit the store shelves until November 7th, but many Xbox fans are eagerly waiting to preorder the console. Microsoft has revealed its price and showed off an impressive lineup of enhanced games, but it hasn’t yet talked about the Xbox One X preorders.
Get notified when Xbox One X preorders open
When Microsoft unveiled the console at E3, many expected the Xbox One X preorders to go live soon. Unfortunately, they were left disappointed. When Microsoft starts accepting pre-orders, the supplies are expected to be scarce. Many retailers have put up listing pages on their websites. They allow you to add the console to your wishlist or sign up to receive an email notification when the product is up for preorders.
Here are the product listing pages on Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart, and GameStop. So, why hasn’t Microsoft started taking Xbox One X preorders? There could be many possible reasons. One is that the product’s launch is still a few months away. Another reason could be that the Xbox One X hasn’t yet received the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval, as the fine print on Microsoft’s website points out. We may not see the preorders go live immediately after FCC approval, though.
Microsoft still has ‘some fun stuff’ to talk about
Albert Penello, Microsoft’s Director of Product Management, recently said in an interview with Gamertag Radio that the company would start taking Xbox One X preorders “closer to launch.” Microsoft wanted its E3 show to be all about the product and gaming lineup. There is “some fun stuff to talk about” that it hasn’t yet talked about. Microsoft will discuss all that stuff at the time of preorders.
Albert Penello says they will do Xbox One X preorders "later in the year" pic.twitter.com/WDTgUY9kF3
— Wario64 (@Wario64) June 12, 2017
The so-called “fun stuff” could be exciting enough to influence the preorders. The One X costs $499 in the US and £449 ($570) in the UK. It means the console will be more expensive than its key competitor PlayStation 4 Pro, which costs $399. Of course, Microsoft justifies the price tag with more powerful specs. Despite such a high price tag, Microsoft has confirmed that it is making no money on the console. In fact, Xbox chief Phil Spencer has said that the company might incur a small loss on the sale of each console.
Xbox One X: A powerful beast
The Xbox One X sports a custom eight-core CPU, a six teraflop graphics processor, 1TB of built-in storage, 326GB/s of memory bandwidth, and 12GB GDDR5 RAM. This horsepower helps the console deliver true 4K gaming at 60fps. It can stream 4K content from Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, and play 4K Blu-rays. Despite such powerful specs, the console is even smaller than the Xbox One S, which was about 40% smaller than the original Xbox One.
The upcoming console weighs 8.4 pounds and has an internal power supply unit. It has a USB port on the front, two USB ports on the rear, an HDMI port, an S/PDIF digital audio, and Ethernet. The custom graphics engine used in One X runs at 1172MHz, significantly higher than PlayStation 4 Pro’s 911MHz. The console has a liquid-cooled vapor chamber cooling technology that you see on high-end PC gaming cards like GTX 1080.
Do you need to buy a 4K display for Xbox One X?
The Xbox One X runs at 4K only if you have a 4K display. However, most gamers are still using 1080p televisions, which offer pretty good experience. Considering most movies, TV shows, online videos and other content are usually offered at 1080p, gamers are unlikely to shell out a huge sum for a 4K display. Fortunately, the console works perfectly fine even on 1080p displays.
The Xbox One X uses a method called super-sampling to detect your display’s resolution and adjust the game to offer enhanced visuals even on relatively lower resolution screens. For instance, it can downscale a game from 4K to 1080p on a 1080p display while still offering faster load speed and higher quality textures. It means you need not buy a 4K monitor because you’ll still see improvements on 1080p displays.
Everything boils down to gaming titles
At the E3, Microsoft also announced as many as 42 games for the Xbox One X and its other consoles. The company said 22 of them would be “console launch exclusives” that would arrive with the One X. Gaming enthusiasts believe that even these 22 titles would be made available to other Xbox consoles in the future.
Some of the launch titles are Crackdown 3, Forza Motorsport 7, and the Sea of Thieves. The Redmond company told media that Forza Motorsport 7 is releasing on October 3rd. The Xbox One X also offers backward compatibility with older games and accessories. Despite the release of new games, the Xbox library will still be lagging behind Sony’s PlayStation in terms of must-have exclusive titles.
The PlayStation has a much bigger gaming library than Xbox. That’s the key reason PlayStation has been outselling Xbox consoles by a huge distance for years. Sony knows that its consoles are less powerful than Xbox One X, but it’s not worried because eventually “everything boils down to gaming titles.”
