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Xbox Series X: What these new features and specs mean for gaming

By Matthew Liebl

COLOGNE, GERMANY - AUGUST 20: Visitors visit the booth of XBOX during the press day at the 2019 Gamescom gaming trade fair on August 20, 2019 in Cologne, Germany. Gamescom 2019, the biggest video gaming trade fair in the world, will be open to the public from August 21-24. (Photo by Lukas Schulze/Getty Images)
COLOGNE, GERMANY - AUGUST 20: Visitors visit the booth of XBOX during the press day at the 2019 Gamescom gaming trade fair on August 20, 2019 in Cologne, Germany. Gamescom 2019, the biggest video gaming trade fair in the world, will be open to the public from August 21-24. (Photo by Lukas Schulze/Getty Images) /
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More new details and features for the Xbox Series X were shared today, but what do all these fancy specs mean for the future of gaming?

While Sony is playing its next-gen PlayStation reveal close to its chest, Microsoft has been about as open of a book as a company can be when it comes to the Xbox Series X. The latest news drop comes from Microsoft head of Xbox himself, Phil Spencer, who took to Xbox Wire to give fans a sneak peek at the next generation of gaming from Xbox.

The blog opens with your typical PR jargon about how gaming will improve under the new Xbox platform. There’s talk of cloud services, graphical power and processing speed, and all that fun stuff. Then Spencer gets into the thick of the details, revealing the Xbox Series X will have 12 Teraflops, Variable Rate Shading, Hardware Accelerated DirectX Raytracing, Quick Resume, Smart Delivery and much, much more.

We all knew the Xbox Series X would be powerful. And all of this sounds wonderful, but what does it actually mean for gaming on the Xbox Series X? I assure you, it’s more than just tech buzz words.

12 TFLOPS of GPU (Graphics Processing Unit)

In short, the Xbox Series X is going to be an absolute beast when it comes to raw power. The custom-designed processor uses AMD’s latest Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures that enable developers to leverage 12 TFLOPs of GPU processing. This means we’re getting higher framerates and larger, more sophisticated worlds.

The XBox Series X will support up to 120 frames per second. This doesn’t necessarily mean that all games will play in 120 fps, though. It sounds as though developers will only have the option to exceed the standard 60 fps, but will they? What would be the benefit? According to Spencer, “heightened realism” and “fast-paced action.”

That said, unless you have a TV that supports 120 frames per second (most only support 60) or you have a gaming monitor, you probably won’t notice much. Of course, it sounds like Microsoft is going all-in on appealing to hardcore gamers which is quite a turnaround from the Xbox One’s launch in which they wanted to be an all-in-one entertainment device.

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