Is the Xbox Series X/S worth getting?

Leigh Milner looks at the technology inside the latest two Xbox consoles.

Leigh Milner - Microsoft have repeatedly called it “the most powerful console ever…”

It’s £450 for the Xbox Series X, and £250 for the Series S… there’s quite a big price difference between the two models.

But why?

The Series X has 1 terabyte of storage, the S has half that. So you can’t download as many games... and the games for this next generation are BIG!

Here’s a word that you might not know - “teraflop”. If you don’t know what it is… 1 teraflop means a computer can process 1 trillion calculations a second.

The Series X has 12 teraflops of processing power. That’s a lot. The Series S has 4 teraflops.

The Series X can play games in true 4k resolution. That’s good. The Series S can only get up to 1440p, which is respectable, but we’ve got a 4k TV.

You get a blu-ray dvd drive with your X. You don’t with the S - as a result… all your gaming has to be disc-free. Which is strange because as I said before, it only comes with half a terabyte of storage.

The Series S is also half the size of the Series X… but no one is buying the next generation of consoles based on how big the box is.

At the end of the day… it doesn’t matter how much power there is, but how it’s used. And with so few new games on the market… a lot of the systems’ potential remains to be seen.

Not many new and optimised games are available yet… but one of the few… being developed for the next generation is... Echo Generation

TRAILER

Echo Generation looks a bit like Animal Crossings in its art style, but there’s definitely a more Lego-y edge to the characters.

The company describes it as “a turn-based adventure game about a gang of kids investigating supernatural events while battling monsters and mechs to save their hometown.”

Chris Berrow spoke to Vanessa Chia and Martin Gauvreau, co-founders of Coco-cumber.

INTERVIEW

Echo Generation is being developed right now… and set for release next year!

Plus they’ve just launched that demo... which you can play now… and the soundtrack is available as well! 

Our next guests on the podcast are the team behind CrossCode... they’ve been supporting the game for quite some time.

Here’s a burst of the trailer

TRAILER

It’s a 2D action role-playing video game… like one of my favourites... Golden Sun…  set in the distant future, combining 16-bit graphics with a fast-paced combat system and puzzle mechanics.

CrossCode was first released two years ago… after a previous 3 years in early access...  it has been gradually released across all platforms… and now it has arrived on the next generation Xbox as one of the launch titles!

Chris Berrow caught up with… Michael Hoss - the Product Manager at Deck 13... and programmer Robert Konrad, - what has the journey to the next generation been like?

INTERVIEW

CrossCode is available now for aroudn £12 on all platforms