11th November 2020, 7:04 PM
(This post was last modified: 11th November 2020, 7:05 PM by A Black Falcon.)
On another note, remember how I said that I managed to get an XSX preorder on that one day they were open for some weeks back? From the Microsoft Store online?
Well, MS went uncommunicative for weeks. No updates. I was worrying, like, will I actually be getting this system? Sure it says "preorder to be delivered on Novembenr 1o" but there was no proof behind it that it'd be happening that soon.
And then, finally, on Sunday Microsoft put a preauthorization on Paypal for the money, and I finally knew I'd be getting it, probably.
Monday there were no updates... until late that evening, when I got a shipping notification. Microsoft didn't just ship these out to the people who got preorders in on their store, they sent them -- totally free of charge, all I paid for this system was $500 plus tax -- via NEXT DAY AIR! For no cost! That's kind of crazy, good on you Microsoft.
(Note before I begin, I haven't played any XSX enhanced games yet, just X1 enhanced ones and below.)
So, when I got home yesterday, the console was waiting for me in its surprisingly small shippiung box. Everything everyone has said about how impressive the presenntation of the box is is telling the truth, it's a quite impressive box, and it's amazingly easy to open -- no scissors are needed for any of the tape, they all have pull-off bits... except for one which didn't work right so I needed som scissors for that. Oh well. Still, MS put some thought into the box presentation and into making the system easy for anyone to set up, including disabled people, and it shows with how nothing is supposed to need scissors, even including the tape holding the box closed, those just peel off easily! And the box looks very nice inside with foam framing the box in the middle.
How big is this box? Kind of small really. It's maybe a little bigger than my Gamecube box. The console itself is thick of course, being a 6x6x11 rectangular solid, and that is inconveient as it won't fit in the shelving unit under my old TV, but still it's an impressively "small" box and I found a good place for it next to my Switch on the TV table thing to the right of the old TV. (I will take some pictures later.)
My first impressions of the system are that it is very quiet (I really only hear anything if the external HDDs I plugged into it are running or if it's reading a disc), is extremely plain looking (I wish they had a bright green version, that'd be awesome... black is okay but kind of boring in comparison, most electronics are black!) and blends into the background, and in terms of hardware feels like what it is, a more powerful Xbox One. This is one of the least new new consoles ever; it is almost fully backwards compatible, running all Xbox One games except for Kinect games, the OS is identical to the new Xbox One OS except it runs faster, and really it just is a faster and more powerful Xbox One... a MUCH faster one, particularly in loading times.
Yes, everything people say about XS load times online is true, they're very fast for things installed to the internal drive. This is definitely not the end of load times though, it's just getting back to something more like the load times from before load times went insane during this past decade. Like, DOA6 loads so fast now, compared to the games' miserably, horribly slow multi-minute loads on the X1! Except, it still takes longer to load than DOA2 on Dreamcast or DOA4 on X360 do, so... yeah. I know that there is a lot more to load these days, but even SSDs can't entirely get rid of loading, there is just too much to load. I know that next-gen games optimized to make use of the full architecture of the SSDs will probably have less loading than a game like this, and the much faster PS5 SSD, for games optimized for it, should reduce loading even further, but I don't think loading is dead, there is, again, just too much to load. But going from minutes of loading to seconds is a big, BIG deal and it makes buying thiis system worth it. The plethora of games with horrible load times on the last gen consoles now will be much less miserable to play.
Other than that though, it's just the X1, just with 4K graphics now for added sharpness, and 120hz support that I haven't seen yet because I don't have any of the 120hz gaems at the moment; my fancy new 4K TV does have 120hz support though, so I'm looking foprwart ot trying it and seeing if I can tell the difference. I haven't bought any new games for the XSX yet, again; I've just tired a few games I already own from my back catalog. I only had two games on my X1S (now XSX, since I attached my two external HDDs from the X1S to the XSX now) which have XSX enhancements, Fortnite and Sea of Thieves, and I haven't played either one yet. I have played some games that run better and have X1X support for 4K and such though, most notably DOA6, which now will run at 4K60 stable in its Graphics mode. I can tell the difference between the Performance (1080p) and Graphics (4K) modes for sure.
Lastly, the take that this is the generation that will be defined as much as anything by limited storage amounts is definitely the right one. On the X1X you get 80GB of usable spae for your $500. On the PS5, you get 667GB of usable space. That's not much. And with how you can't currently put an addon SSD into the PS5 since they haven't authorized any yet, and the Xbox addon memory unit is $220 for 1TB... storage is losing, games are getting larger faster than storage is and that is frustratring. I have always wanted to just be able to play any of my games anytime, and with this system I won't be able to do that unless MUCH larger memory addon units release down the road. It's frustrating, but what choice is there? Mechanical hard drives load too slowly for modern consoles.
Well, MS went uncommunicative for weeks. No updates. I was worrying, like, will I actually be getting this system? Sure it says "preorder to be delivered on Novembenr 1o" but there was no proof behind it that it'd be happening that soon.
And then, finally, on Sunday Microsoft put a preauthorization on Paypal for the money, and I finally knew I'd be getting it, probably.
Monday there were no updates... until late that evening, when I got a shipping notification. Microsoft didn't just ship these out to the people who got preorders in on their store, they sent them -- totally free of charge, all I paid for this system was $500 plus tax -- via NEXT DAY AIR! For no cost! That's kind of crazy, good on you Microsoft.
(Note before I begin, I haven't played any XSX enhanced games yet, just X1 enhanced ones and below.)
So, when I got home yesterday, the console was waiting for me in its surprisingly small shippiung box. Everything everyone has said about how impressive the presenntation of the box is is telling the truth, it's a quite impressive box, and it's amazingly easy to open -- no scissors are needed for any of the tape, they all have pull-off bits... except for one which didn't work right so I needed som scissors for that. Oh well. Still, MS put some thought into the box presentation and into making the system easy for anyone to set up, including disabled people, and it shows with how nothing is supposed to need scissors, even including the tape holding the box closed, those just peel off easily! And the box looks very nice inside with foam framing the box in the middle.
How big is this box? Kind of small really. It's maybe a little bigger than my Gamecube box. The console itself is thick of course, being a 6x6x11 rectangular solid, and that is inconveient as it won't fit in the shelving unit under my old TV, but still it's an impressively "small" box and I found a good place for it next to my Switch on the TV table thing to the right of the old TV. (I will take some pictures later.)
My first impressions of the system are that it is very quiet (I really only hear anything if the external HDDs I plugged into it are running or if it's reading a disc), is extremely plain looking (I wish they had a bright green version, that'd be awesome... black is okay but kind of boring in comparison, most electronics are black!) and blends into the background, and in terms of hardware feels like what it is, a more powerful Xbox One. This is one of the least new new consoles ever; it is almost fully backwards compatible, running all Xbox One games except for Kinect games, the OS is identical to the new Xbox One OS except it runs faster, and really it just is a faster and more powerful Xbox One... a MUCH faster one, particularly in loading times.
Yes, everything people say about XS load times online is true, they're very fast for things installed to the internal drive. This is definitely not the end of load times though, it's just getting back to something more like the load times from before load times went insane during this past decade. Like, DOA6 loads so fast now, compared to the games' miserably, horribly slow multi-minute loads on the X1! Except, it still takes longer to load than DOA2 on Dreamcast or DOA4 on X360 do, so... yeah. I know that there is a lot more to load these days, but even SSDs can't entirely get rid of loading, there is just too much to load. I know that next-gen games optimized to make use of the full architecture of the SSDs will probably have less loading than a game like this, and the much faster PS5 SSD, for games optimized for it, should reduce loading even further, but I don't think loading is dead, there is, again, just too much to load. But going from minutes of loading to seconds is a big, BIG deal and it makes buying thiis system worth it. The plethora of games with horrible load times on the last gen consoles now will be much less miserable to play.
Other than that though, it's just the X1, just with 4K graphics now for added sharpness, and 120hz support that I haven't seen yet because I don't have any of the 120hz gaems at the moment; my fancy new 4K TV does have 120hz support though, so I'm looking foprwart ot trying it and seeing if I can tell the difference. I haven't bought any new games for the XSX yet, again; I've just tired a few games I already own from my back catalog. I only had two games on my X1S (now XSX, since I attached my two external HDDs from the X1S to the XSX now) which have XSX enhancements, Fortnite and Sea of Thieves, and I haven't played either one yet. I have played some games that run better and have X1X support for 4K and such though, most notably DOA6, which now will run at 4K60 stable in its Graphics mode. I can tell the difference between the Performance (1080p) and Graphics (4K) modes for sure.
Lastly, the take that this is the generation that will be defined as much as anything by limited storage amounts is definitely the right one. On the X1X you get 80GB of usable spae for your $500. On the PS5, you get 667GB of usable space. That's not much. And with how you can't currently put an addon SSD into the PS5 since they haven't authorized any yet, and the Xbox addon memory unit is $220 for 1TB... storage is losing, games are getting larger faster than storage is and that is frustratring. I have always wanted to just be able to play any of my games anytime, and with this system I won't be able to do that unless MUCH larger memory addon units release down the road. It's frustrating, but what choice is there? Mechanical hard drives load too slowly for modern consoles.