How Will the Xbox One X Change the Landscape of Console Gaming?

Disclaimer* I am not a videogame console developer, so these takes are my own personal thoughts.  Don’t cry in the comments if I get a spec wrong you whiny internet baby.

Following the Post E3 wrap-up, we can all sit down around a fire, have a few beers and unanimously agree that Nintendo basically pulled up to E3 in an All-American Harley, kicked down the front doors of the event, walk down the center aisle, lit a cigarette, kissed your girlfriend on the way down, while shooting off finger guns at the rest of the crowd, in aviators.  Sony cowered in the back corner with literally nothing to fight back with, however, Microsoft gave their best attempt to battle back the behemoth of a showcase Nintendo out forth raining down just about everything their fans have been clamoring for.  Microsoft drew their Excalibur from the stone in the form of the Xbox One X (yeah look I don’t really like the name either).  We will have to pick this analogy back up after the XboneX drops , and Nintendo has had some time to follow through with some of their promises, but until that point just imagine Microsoft as King Arthur fighting off a fucking giant Nintendo Dragon, or even better a Mario T-Rex, and this battle will continue to wage on until we find out who wins.

Touting the no-longer overly ambitious title of being the most powerful console of all time, Microsoft dropped a glorious bomb on us in the form of the Xbox One X with pretty much every bit of information one could ask for.  We got the specs:

We got a release date: November 7th of this year.  We got the increased hype around backwards compatibility, a segment of the gaming realm that Microsoft is absolutely dominating already, and will now continue to dominate.  We now have full access to 4K graphics…with the caveat being the necessity to own a 4K television.  But beyond all of that, in my opinion the biggest contribution Microsoft is giving to the gaming community as a whole is actually in the form of development.

It has been stated over and over again that the Xbox One X was developed with the developers in mind.  With the 40% increase in processing power, rendering, GPU and CPU, all brought together by the in-house developed Scorpio engine, videogame developers no longer have to dedicate an extraneous amount of time to making videogames as beautiful and powerful as they have been.  It just comes along with the power of the Scorpio engine.  What does that mean for the developers?  Well, the time needed to boost the gaming power is no reduced, therefore, that time can be invested into creating more richly filled environments, open world games can be significantly larger than before (Elder Scrolls 6 bro), that DLC they “couldn’t finish and release with the game” can now come at launch, and we as gamers are now able to play Super Rigged PC level videogames.  For the longest time I have been telling myself, once I graduate I will put a whole paycheck to building a rig for the best gaming experience I can get.  Now, I don’t know if I’ll have to do that.  With a 500$ price check on the Xbox One X, I can get that experience and not have to invest 1,300$ into a rig.  Granted I will have to buy a nice 4K TV, but I planned on doing that at some point anyway, and that 4K TV isn’t limited to a desktop monitor.

I think with this huge push coming from Microsoft, some big changes to the videogame landscape can really take place.  The PC master race now has some competition and I honestly think some PC gamers may switch over to the Xbox One X.  Of course, the die hard PC gamers who upgrade their rigs every other month will forever stand against console gaming, but I think there is a chunk of them who could move to console gaming.  The big switch from developers moving their first access DLC releases from Xbox to Sony will swing back in favor of the Xbox One X which means I will finally be able to easter egg hunt COD zombies maps again without them being spoiled and ruined for me.  Finally, I think we are entering into an incredibly competitive era of console gaming.  Nintendo will always pave their own path, but Sony and Microsoft feed off of each other, and this could bring out some of the best gaming advancements we have seen in a while.  I am still a broke graduate student right now, but I should be a fully employed guy making some money by the time the Xbox One X drops in November so I may just have to get my hands on one of these juggernauts at launch.  Stay tuned for more Xbox One X and all of your gaming needs here at WickedGoodGaming.com and make sure to check out Not Another Gaming Podcast every week live on Twitch/Mixer and every Friday on any podcast platform you can think of.  Dr.Bob Signing Off