Microsoft fully revealed the full hardware specs for its Xbox Series X on Monday, but it’s a pair of new tech demo videos that showcases what some of that speed will mean for the next-generation console.
In one video, Microsoft shows off shortened load times enabled by the Xbox Series X’s standard solid-state storage — a 1 TB custom NVME SSD, according to Microsoft. A side-by-side load of State of Decay 2 illustrates that on an Xbox One X, it take about 52 seconds to load the open-world game from its main menu. On Xbox Series X, that load time is slashed to about 10 seconds.
Granted, that’s a backward compatible Xbox One title running on a Series X, and “does not represent gameplay optimized for Xbox Series X.” It’s possible that Microsoft and its developers could reduce comparable load times even further by updating games like State of Decay 2 with the expectation of an SSD.
Microsoft touts the Xbox Series X’s so-called Velocity Architecture in its tech demo, which it describes as the “combination of custom hardware and deep software integration” that will “enable richer and more dynamic living worlds” and will “effectively eliminates loading times, and makes fast travel systems just that: fast.”
Microsoft also showed off the Xbox Series X’s quick resume feature, which will let players resume multiple games from save states. In the video above, the demo shows a player loading games in progress from Forza Motorsport 7, Ori and the Blind Forest, Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, and State of Decay 2. Again, all titles shown during the demo represented backward compatible Xbox One games running on Xbox Series X.
Xbox Series X is slated to launch this holiday season.
