Is the new Xbox Series X a competitor of gaming PC

After waiting for a long time, Finally, Microsoft has finally decided to go out of its way and downplay the box part of Xbox. Whether it's committing to bring all of its first-party titles to PC, releasing some of them to platforms like Nintendo Switch and Steam, launching its Game Pass service for Windows, or pushing its xCloud streaming service, the message has been cleared that you don't have to buy an Xbox to play Xbox games.

For Microsoft, business isn't how many consoles it sells, Xbox chief Phil talked to Spencer the techowish earlier this year.

But obviously, Microsoft still decided to make Xboxes. The question is this: why would anyone want to buy one? What is the merit of dedicated Xbox hardware when Microsoft wants the Xbox platform to be everywhere?

On 13th December, the company had a surprise reveal of the New Xbox Series X, and Microsoft effectively answered that question. It is a console that looks unlike anything that has ever been released by Microsoft. Except, for a gaming PC. And that's very promising.

Gadgets get described as monolithic all the time, but I can't think of a better application of the word than the Series X. It's a vertical tower, virtually featureless black slab. While it shares the design and the language with the Xbox One X, that only serves to highlight the difference between the two. The Xbox One X was designed to be as small as possible, but the Series X screams power as compared to other series.

With its chunky vertical frame, the Series X feels like it won't be constrained in any physical dimension. By looking at it we remember about the compact gaming PCs like the Corsair One. That may be its drawback, even in a horizontal orientation, it not going to fit in my TV cabinet. But the advantage is that Microsoft has planted more thermal headroom to play with than ever before.

Size doesn't guarantee performance, of course. Microsoft started this generation with the largest and least powerful console, and now has the smallest and most powerful machine around the world. From what we have heard about the Xbox Series X, it's shaping up to be a potent machine even by gaming PC standards, as this time, almost all the games are available with it. That wasn't the case with the Xbox One and PS4, both of which were built around low-power AMD CPUs. But Microsoft says that they are targeting 4k/60fps with Series X. RDNA and Zen 2 architecture from AMD, leveraging hardware-accelerated ray tracing, GDDR6 memory, and NVMe solid-state storage.

Spencer tells GameSpot that the Xbox Series X will offer around four times more powerful CPU performance than the Xbox One and twice as much GPU power as the Xbox One X. That should put the Series X at around 12 teraflops of graphical performance, which is up there with some of the fastest PC GPUs available today in the market. The Series X is quite a bulky box, but I don't expect there to be much wasted space inside the box.

Teraflops don't mean everything, and the CPU and SSD will be the more transformative leaps for the platform. The name "Series X" all but confirms the existence of more next-generation hardware from Microsoft, one example of which The techowish has reported on extensively. The company codenamed Lockhart is expected to target lower resolutions with around 4 teraflops of graphical power, which is less than the Xbox One X.

Most of the One X GPU budget went toward starting 4K resolution, however, while it only offered some minor CPU upgrades. If Lockhart's CPU and other hardware components are similar to the Xbox Series X, it could run the same cutting-edge games at lower resolutions, whereas the Xbox One CPU could not be able to keep up with the next-generation software. On the other hand, developers are likely to produce separate Xbox One/PS4 and Series X/PS5 versions of games for the foreseeable future. Halo Infinite is one confirmed to be such an example.

In any case, it is clear that Microsoft has done with the Series X: it's built a simple, easy-to-use gaming PC for our living room. The current Xbox One UI is not what I would describe as natural, but it beats dealing with Windows with a mouse and keyboard from the couch, and now the Series X should be able to fight on pure power as well.

Unless you have the most expensive high-end gaming PCs, I would expect the Series X to offer the best experience with most Xbox games at launch yet. That's not the case with the new Xbox One X, which can't compete with gaming PCs on performance right now. PC gamers have had it easy over the past few years the Xbox One and PS4 had such weak CPUs that, a couple of examples notwithstanding, it's generally been very easy to run console games at very high graphical settings and frame rates on fairly simple hardware. PC performance will get better over time, but the next generation of consoles is going to raise that bar considerably next year.

That's not to say that Series X will be an automatic purchase for many. From what Sony is saying, the PS5 has been designed with similar principles, and the company's first-party software advantage is significant. The huge success of PS4 means that a lot of people will be unwilling to be part of the digital libraries, they have built up over the past seven years.

But the fight has started now, it's probably Microsoft's Xbox Everywhere approach, where a subscription lets you instant access to a huge gaming ecosystem that can be played across various screens. With the Series X, Microsoft is simply aiming to give power and the best Xbox experience possible on one screen in particular. And Spencer is bullish on the competition. "We like leading in the power of performance, and I feel like we're going to be there again".

The biggest questions are whether Microsoft's new console is now priced and whether the PS5 is. After seeing the new Xbox Series X, I'm no longer wondering why anyone would buy an Xbox.