After Microsoft revealed the specs of the Xbox Series X, it prompted us to compare it with the original Xbox One. Yes, not the upgraded ‘world’s most powerful console’ as it stands (One X), but the original 2013 hardware that went through its fair share of controversy.
Xbox One – The Fall of Microsoft
The original Xbox One was revealed in May 2013 and as we all know it, received quite a lot of flak for some mandatory requirements. These included that the console needed to be always connected to the internet, the insistence of it being a home entertainment center before being a gaming console, and certain other dim-witted decisions.
Microsoft’s decisions meant that gamers would be giving up on many console-specific advantages that were taken for granted before- such as the ability to share games with friends without any hassle. Well, we all know how that turned out. Microsoft had to go back on their words and had to eventually accept the pre-launch defeat. They essentially handed it over to Sony after receiving so much negative media attention.
But credit where credit’s due – Microsoft has managed to turn the Xbox brand around. Today, they’re in a much better position than they were 7 years ago. The Xbox One X continues to be, at least for the time being, the world’s most powerful gaming console. It’s legitimately powerful enough for running games at 4K resolution, and for certain titles, 4K 60 FPS is quite possible. But we’re going to talk about the original launch 2013 console first.
Xbox One vs Xbox Series X
At a glance, here are the specs of the 2013 launch Xbox One compared to the Series X, along with the rest of the newer models also thrown in for clarity:
| Xbox One | Xbox One S | Xbox One X | Xbox Series X | |
| CPU | 8x Cores @ 1.75 GHz Custom AMD Jaguar CPU | 8x Cores @ 1.75 GHz Custom AMD Jaguar CPU | 8x Cores @ 2.3 GHz Custom AMD Jaguar CPU | 8x Cores @ 3.8 GHz Custom AMD Zen 2 CPU |
| GPU | 1.31 TFLOPS AMD Radeon GCN APU at 853 MHz | 1.4 TFLOPS AMD Radeon GCN APU at 914 MHz | 6 TFLOPS AMD Radeon GCN APU at 1.72 GHz | 12 TFLOPS, AMD RDNA 2 at 1.825 GHz |
| Memory | 8GB DDR3 + 32 MB eSRAM | 8GB DDR3 RAM + 32 MB eSRAM | 12GB GDDR5 | 16 GB GDDR6 |
| Storage | 500 GB 5400 rpm Hard Drive | 500 GB Hard Drive | 1 TB Hard Drive | 1 TB Custom NVME SSD |
It’s quite evident just how weak the original console is when compared to the 4K capable One X. The base console was also weaker than the base PS4 back when it came out. Even today, most Xbox One games run at 900p, not even touching full HD.
In one generation we jumped from a 900p machine to a 4K capable one. That itself shows tremendous technological growth. We recently compared the One X with an NVIDIA Geforce RTX 2060 Super desktop graphics card, and the results were impressive.
And now, 4K 60 FPS is being targeted as the standard with the Series X (and PS5). We previously talked about the next-gen console’s capabilities where we mentioned how, aside from visuals, performance will be the main USP of the consoles.
Microsoft’s Return to Form
While Sony has continued to provide some great single-player exclusives, Microsoft has been taking a different approach. There’s no question that we’ll get more, and better, exclusives in the next few years. But for the time being, Microsoft has made some great strides in cross-platform game development, and have some excellent services like Game Pass at their disposal. The ‘Play Anywhere’ initiative is also great for uniting both PC and console players.
Microsoft will be releasing the Xbox Series X sometime around Holiday 2020, considering everything goes according to plan.