Project Scorpio is now officially the Xbox One X, and it promises true 4K gaming at 60fps. Find out the Xbox One X release date, price, specs and more here.
A year after Sony released an amped-up version of the PS4 in the PS4 Pro, Microsoft is now doing the same, giving the Xbox One S a bigger brother: the Xbox One X.
Here, we discuss all we know about the One X – formerly known as Project Scorpio – including the release date, price, and some of the key features that you can expect from the high-end console, including full specs. Also read our Xbox One X preview, including hands-on video.
Microsoft announced at E3 2017 that the Xbox One X will be out in both the UK and US on 7 November 2017 .
Another major E3 announcement was the price of the new high-spec console: it will go on sale at £449.99/$499.99.
For comparison, the Xbox One X costs £100/$100 more than Sony’s rival PS4 Pro and we wouldn’t be surprised if that saw a price drop between now and the One X’s November release date to make the comparison even more favourable for Sony.
Microsoft announced the launch of pre-orders during its Gamescom live stream, but only for the limited edition ‘Project Scorpio Edition’ of the console, which includes an exclusive vertical stand and has ‘Project Scorpio’ inscribed on both the console and the included controller. Unsurprisingly, it sold out almost immediately.
Fortunately, as of 20 September you can now pre-order the Xbox One X regular edition. If you’re in the UK, head to GAME, Amazon, Argos and the official store; in the US check out GameStop, Best Buy, Amazon, and the Microsoft store. Act fast though – we don’t know how much stock Microsoft will have ready for launch.
You can also pick it up in one of a few official bundles from Microsoft. £469.99/$469.99 will get you the console along with Forza Motorsport 7, £549.99/$549.99 gets you the console and an Xbox One Elite controller, while £569.98/$569.98 gets you all three .
You might also have a shot at getting an Xbox One X early – and for a lot less than the RRP – though only if you live in the US. And don’t mind eating a lot of tacos.
Microsoft has partnered up with Taco Bell, and anyone in the US who buys the Steak Quesadilla box before 4 October – which at $5 is a lot less than an Xbox One X – has a shot at winning the console. The company even says it’ll pick a winner roughly every 10 minutes, so they must have plenty of them to give away.
We discussed the One X’s specs and our expectations for the console before the E3 announcement on the UK Tech Weekly podcast:
One of the most impressive elements of the Xbox One X is the design – Microsoft has managed to cram an awful lot of hardware into what it claims is the smallest Xbox ever.
The sleek black box is even smaller than the Xbox One S, despite packing in considerable more powerful specs. It boasts a simple matt finish, with the now familiar Xbox grill effect at the end, and has a slight lip from the larger top half.
Along with the power socket, there’s both HDMI in and out, three USB 3.0 ports (one at the front), along with IR, optical sound, and ethernet. It also includes both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for wireless functionality.
In an almost unprecedented step for a modern console, Microsoft fully revealed the Xbox One X’s specs to Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry months ahead of the console’s release, so we know exactly what we have to look forward to.
First up, let’s talk CPU. The One X boasts a custom-built eight-core CPU, with each core clocked at 2.3GHz. That’s similar to the octa-core setup in the PS4 Pro, but that only runs at 2.1GHz – and it’s miles ahead of the 1.75GHz CPU in the original Xbox One.
That’s an exciting step up, and it’s needed to drive the biggest hardware change here: the GPU. The entirely custom AMD chip boasts 40 compute units each running at 1172MHz – dramatically faster than the 911MHz the PS4 can manage across its 36 units. Microsoft has lived up to its promise to offer six teraflops of GPU power.
That’s all with the aim of running smooth, consistent 4K, which requires plenty of bandwidth elsewhere. To that end, the One X has 12GB of GDDR5 (versus 8GB in the PS4 Pro), with a total memory bandwidth of 326GB/s (218GB/s on the PS4 Pro), with 9GB dedicated to games and 3GB for the system.
It also boasts a 1TB hard drive by default, again with improved bandwidth to help keep load times light. There’s also one of the latest AMD media blocks, to let players capture game content in full 4K with HDR, and an Ultra HD Blu-ray drive.
All of that extra power means extra heat, and the One X has opted for a console cooling first: in line with high-end PC graphics chips like the GTX 1080, the Scorpio boasts a vapour chamber heat sink, which in turn required a custom fan – all in the name of packing in enough cooling to run the high-power console in a compact form factor.
Meanwhile the sound is impressive true – it boasts 5.1 surround sound driven by Dolby Atmos, so your games should sound as good as they look.
What’s clear from across these specs is that not only does the One X improve on the original Xbox One S in almost every regard, it also exceeds the specifications of the PS4 Pro in just about every area. Whatever else you say about it, this does indeed look like the most powerful console on the market – by a comfortable margin.
If you’re not sure about whether you should buy it over the PS4 Pro, Microsoft has addressed the issue directly.
« Well, I’d say if you want true 4K gaming, it requires 6TFLOPs of power, we have 43% more graphical power, over 60% more memory we make available to developers, » said Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg to EPN.tv .
« But the most important thing is, whether you’re a hockey fan, a racing fan, an RPG fan, whatever game you want to play, it will look and play better on the Xbox One X, because we bring significantly more power to the table. »
Thanks to Microsoft’s E3 briefing we have a pretty good idea of the sort of performance layers can expect from the Xbox One X.
The company has made much of the console’s 4K capabilities, and showed them off in Forza Motorsport 7, which it claimed was running in true 4K (including 4K assets) at a locked 60fps – a claim borne out by Digital Foundry’s time with the hardware earlier in the year:
Of course, this is a single first-party demo, perfectly optimised, but it shows off one of Microsoft’s major goals for the One X: to produce native 4K at 60fps with overhead to spare.
Microsoft has also reportedly mandated that all Xbox One X titles should run at the same frame rate or higher than the standard Xbox One – so don’t worry about 4K impacting frame rates – and even those with 1080p displays will see some benefit, as they can set the console to render in 4K and supersample down to 1080p.
