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Xbox One X

For the final four years, Microsoft has played 2d fiddle to Sony's PlayStation iv. There are a number of reasons why, including poor initial advice, an abrupt reversal on system features, a $100 higher cost point, and an initial focus on multimedia capabilities as opposed to gaming. The fact that the Xbox One was more often than not slower than the PS4 and ran at lower resolutions hasn't helped either. With the Xbox One 10 launching next week, Microsoft intends to reclaim the performance crown and hopefully improve its own market share.

Microsoft has good reason to fret about its own position in the console market this bike. A yr agone, merely prior to the PS4 Pro's launch, that console had sold 39.8M units compared with 20.7M for the Xbox One, a gap of 1.92x. Today, the PS4 has shipped 63.4M units, compared with 31.1M for the Xbox One. That's a gap of 2.04x (all data from VGChartz). To be clear, 31.1 million consoles sold is still a huge install base, only the gap between the two platforms is accelerating. After slugging information technology out with Sony with the Xbox and Xbox 360, Microsoft isn't willing to run into its formidable market place presence weaken whatever further. That's why the company is willing to forego a profit on the Xbox One, in the hopes of weakening Sony's authority. It also hopes to boot total sales back above the Xbox 360. While the Xbox I historically enjoyed a moderate shipment advantage above its predecessor, that gap had shrunk dramatically by 2017:

The good news is, Microsoft is forecasting high need for its current panel. ""I won't talk about the exact numbers but the demand is super high, we are very, very excited nigh Xbox I Ten correct now," Panos Panay, corporate vice president of devices at Microsoft, told CNBC in a TV interview Tuesday.

"I won't compare information technology to other consoles," Panay said. "What I'll say is the demand for Xbox One 10 right at present is exactly where we predictable, even more so when you come across that excitement for the production… this is something that resonates with gamers."

The Xbox 1 X is substantially more than powerful than any console currently on the marketplace. Its CPUs are nevertheless based on AMD's Jaguar, but the clock has increased to 2.3GHz; ane.1x faster than the PS4 Pro. Meanwhile, the new system packs 40 graphics compute units (CUs) based on AMD's Polaris architecture, and clocked at 1172MHz. That's a huge leap on 2 fronts. First, the number of GCN cores has shot upwardly, from 768 to 2,560, a gain of 3.33x. Second, the GPU clock has risen from 853MHz to 1172MHz, a proceeds of i.37x.

The organisation'due south RAM configuration has also grown, from 8GB to 12GB, and from a combined ESRAM cache + DDR3 system to a unified GDDR5 system with 326GB/south of bandwidth–ane.49x more than the PS4 Pro. While you lot can't discern everything about a system's performance based on specs, the PS4 Pro and Xbox One Ten are similar enough that comparing the ii is fairly straightforward. And while PC gamers may not be pleased to hear it, the $500 price point on the new rig is unbeatable if you lot're building a new PC from scratch (upgrades are a different story; nosotros covered the cost suspension downs earlier this year).

The only question now is, will gamers flock to the new, more powerful organisation, and close the gap between Sony and Microsoft, or has the PS4 Pro established too much headroom to be caught?

At present read: The Best Xbox Ane and Xbox One Ten Accessories and The Best Cheap Games Enhanced for the Xbox One Ten