November 10th and the launch date of the Xbox Series X|S is now just over two weeks away, and Microsoft has just shared an official next-gen demo walkthrough of the Xbox Series X|S platform experience, giving a look at everything from Quick Resume to the Seagate Storage Expansion Card.
The video is almost 15 minutes long, and gives an efficient overview of the capabilities and power of the Xbox Series X. Malik Prince, Xbox community PM, and Harrison Hoffman, principal program manager, break down the demo with a retail unit of the Xbox Series X. First up, they look at the Home screen, giving a glimpse of the dynamic backgrounds coming with the Series X and S. There’s one for each colour, but Prince says more will come in future. Microsoft discussed the “new Xbox experience” launching alongside the Xbox Series X earlier in the year, discussing how it was aiming for a welcoming, speedy and unified Xbox experience, and Hoffman discusses this in more detail. He describes Home as offering a simplified, optimised, and more accessible experience, with speedy access to the recent games you’ve been playing.
They then start up Gears 5 — which will be getting an Xbox Series X|S upgrade — and show how it runs at 4K 60fps. Hoffman draws attention to the texture detail, pointing out that they are the same textures as used in the PC version with ultra settings. We then get a look at the Guide, which is described an “over-game menu,” popping up quickly. They then head into Dirt 5, showing off the speed of the Quick Resume feature, which lets you “instantly pick up where you left off across multiple games in the system.” In this case, Hoffman was dropped straight back into the middle of a race.
They then play Subnautica, showing how backwards compatible games make use of the auto HDR feature which adds HDR enhancements to games which had originally only launched with SDR. We see the new wireless controller, which Hoffman says is a little smaller, and a look at the new Share button: pressing the button once gets a screenshot while holding it records a clip, meaning you can share content more quickly without having to exit the game.
The Xbox app is discussed, along with its new features. For instance, it offers remote play for console games on iOS, and it also offers remote download, meaning you can have games ready to play when you get home. Prince comments on the number of games included with Xbox Game Pass, and reiterates that EA Play will join Xbox Game Pass on November 10th. The walkthrough mentions the “brand new advanced networking hardware” in both consoles for speeding up the download times for games, before mentioning the changes to My Games and Apps: for instance, the new badges on tiles which show which subscription games come from such as EA Play and Xbox Game Pass. Lastly, we had a look at the 1TB Seagate Storage Expansion Card, which will “provide additional game storage at the same performance” by “replicating the console’s custom SSD experience.”
It’s a thorough breakdown of what we’ll see when the Xbox Series X|S launches in just over two weeks on November 10th.