Items tagged with xbox series x
The console war between Microsoft and Sony is currently in a new generation, with the Xbox Series X/Xbox Series S battling it out against the PlayStation 5/PlayStation 5 Digital Edition. However, the consoles are broadly similar concerning internal hardware, with each sporting an AMD Zen 2-based Ryzen processor coupled with an RDNA 2 GPU. But there's one PlayStation 5 hardware accessory that Xbox chief Phil Spencer seemingly wants for the Xbox family: DualSense. The DualSense controller uses haptic feedback instead of rumble for a more realistic "tactile" sensation while gaming. In addition, the adaptive triggers can have varying resistance based on actions taking place on-screen. Unfortunately,...
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It took a minute or two, but AMD is finally ready to acknowledge and even tout its 4700S Desktop Kit, which is essentially a small form factor package for DIY builders. It consists of a tiny motherboard, a custom processor based on AMD's previous generation Zen 2 architecture (the same architecture found in the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5), and memory. From a marketing standpoint, AMD's pitch is that this DIY kit makes building a PC incredibly easy. Not that assembling a PC is very difficult to begin with, but from AMD's vantage point, the 4700S Desktop Kit simplifies the process even further, in a compact and powerful package. "Bringing modern PC performance into a simple preconfigured...
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For the second time this month, but really just the first time (more on that in a moment), Microsoft has officially confirmed it is embracing support for AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution technology on its latest generation Xbox game consoles (Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S). To get things started, FSR is now available to preview within Microsoft's Game Development Kit (GDK). So what is this business about a second confirmation, but not really? Well, earlier this month we reported on a comment Microsoft made that, on the surface, seemed to signify that FSR support was headed to the Xbox Series X/S. Judge for yourself. "At Xbox, we're excited about the potential of AMD's FidelityFX Super Resolution...
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The Xbox Series X is the most powerful current-generation console on the market (thanks to custom AMD Zen 2/RDNA 2 hardware), and it supports several advanced graphics technologies to boost the gaming experience across the board. Now, the Philips Momentum display is leveraging all this tech in what is described as the world's first "Designed for Xbox" monitor. For starters, the Momentum (559M1RYV) is a 55-inch display with a 4K resolution. In addition to its DisplayHDR 1000 certification, the display features a minimum 120Hz refresh rate (144Hz maximum on PCs) along with AMD FreeSync Premium Pro support. If that wasn't enough, Philips has also incorporated a dedicated Xbox Game Mode that is "specially...
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We are keeping a pulse on Amazon's Prime Day 2021 deals, including discounts on PC gaming hardware, laptops, storage products, wireless earbuds, and more. It's a massive sale, spread out across two days. We can't possibly cover it all, but we did want to give console gaming its own roundup, to cover the many discounts available on games for the PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. Let's get started, shall we? Our spider-sense for discounts has been tingling in the days and weeks ahead of Prime Day 2021, and we're elated to see Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales Ultimate Ultimate Edition for the PlayStation 5 discounted to $49.99 at Amazon ($20 off, save...
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It has been a tough slog to lay hands on the latest consoles from Microsoft and Sony. While the Xbox Series S can often be found online during "console drops" without much trouble, there's always a mad rush to obtain the more powerful Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. GameStop, however, is looking to take advantage of this incredible demand for the consoles and leverage the desperateness of some gamers to obtain one. This week, the company announced that its PowerUp Rewards Pro members would receive priority access to Xbox Series S/X and PlayStation 5. While the standard PowerUp Rewards program is free for anyone to join, the "Pro" tier costs $14.99/year. PowerUp Rewards members began receiving...
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Start penning your letter to Santa now, because I have little doubt that one of this holiday season's hottest items will be a miniature fridge that looks like an Xbox Series X game console. Yes, the aptly named Xbox Mini Fridge is a real item (I checked the date and we're far removed from April Fool's Day), and I am undoubtedly not alone in wanting one. How did this come to be? Around a year ago Microsoft gifted a full-size fridge to iconic rapper Snoop Dogg for his birthday, who posted a video of the awesome appliance to Twitter. Microsoft also gave one to i.Justine, a tech YouTuber and influencer. Not surprisingly, the novelty fridge received a ton of attention, and now a mini version is being...
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If you bought Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order to play on previous generation consoles, a major update is now available to those who upgraded to next-gen Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 consoles. As promised, Electronic Arts and developer Respawn Entertainment announced that the free cross-generation upgrade is now available to existing owners of the game. While Jedi: Fallen Order already looked good on consoles like the Xbox One X and PlayStation 4 Pro, the is next-gen makes the game look even better all-around while ramping up performance. According to Respawn, here are the updates presents with the next-gen upgrade: Higher Resolution Textures & Assets 4K/HDR Resolution Improved 60 FPS Performance...
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There's no love lost between Sony and Microsoft on the console front. The companies are fierce competitors, and things are heating up now that the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 have been battling it out on the market for the past six months. One point of friction between the two comes concerning games and how they're delivered to consumers. Given that Microsoft has its Windows PC and Xbox platforms to distribute games, it has the ability -- so far, with great success -- to release first-party games simultaneously only on both platforms. In addition, through Xbox Game Pass, gamers can play new releases on day one with their subscription -- not just old games from its existing PlayStation-exclusive...
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In just a few weeks, AMD will flip the switch on its highly anticipated FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) upscaling technology, and we will find out if the real-world results match the company's claims and what it showed off during Computex 2021. It's not just headed to PC, either. At some point, Microsoft will enable FSR on its Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S game consoles, the company confirmed. What's at play here is a "spatial upscaling technique" that is used to create a "super resolution" image from game engine input frames. Similar to NVIDIA's proprietary Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology, the idea is to render images at a lower resolution and then upscale them, to improve...
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For both gamers and developers, the Unreal Engine team's work, such as the MetaHuman creator, is simply amazing. Now, Unreal Engine 5 is just over the horizon, and it appears to mark a massive milestone in game fidelity and performance. There is a new demo out today, with some new features, such as something awesome called "Temporal Super Resolution." Temporal Super Resolution (TSR) is quite a mouthful of a name, but it quite impressive, according to the latest Unreal Engine docs. The team at Epic Games claims that with TSR enabled, you can get 4K quality with the framerates one would typically see at 1080p. In the example shown, the team rendered 4K frames at native 4K, which netted 18.6FPS,...
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We now have an official launch date for the Xbox Series X/S and PlayStation 5 remasters of Grand Theft Auto 5 (GTA 5). Rockstar announced this morning in a blog that the remaster will arrive on November 11th, which is nearly six months away. While GTA 5 runs and still looks good on the newest consoles (if you can get one), there’s still plenty of room for improvement to take advantage of the hardware capabilities of these Ryzen 3000/RDNA 2-fueled gaming beasts. To that end, Take-Two boss Stauss Zelnick explained in early March that making a simple port just isn’t in Rockstar’s DNA when it comes to games. “We’ve done [remastering] differently than the competition...
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Heads up console gamers, if you own an Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S, are part of the Xbox Insider program, and are subscribed to the alpha ring, there is a new update available that enables playing games in the Dolby Vision HDR format. Microsoft is hoping to solicit feedback and stomp out any bugs before rolling out support broadly later this year. This is something that was announced last year, before the consoles came out. The plan was always to bring Dolby Vision support to both of Microsoft's newest generation Xbox consoles by the end of this year, though precisely when is still not known. However, the fact that it is actively being tested in the Xbox Insider program suggests it is close....
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Remember AMD's mysterious 4700S Desktop Kit we wrote about a few weeks back? Speculation is that it is essentially a repurposed APU that was originally intended for Microsoft's Xbox Series X, perhaps because the silicon did not pass muster. Well, the partially disabled part has resurfaced, this time in a series of high resolution photos. The first appearance came in a Geekbench listing, which identified the part as having 8 cores and 16 threads, 12MB of L3 cache, and a 4GHz boost clock, which is 200MHz higher than the Xbox Series X and 400MHz higher than the Xbox Series S. It also showed up on a driver support page on AMD's website, which has since been removed. AMD can scrub its site of any...
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AMD processors that were originally intended for Microsoft's Xbox Series X consoles may have found their way to resellers in China. Or perhaps AMD is building a new CPU for select markets. Either way, a mysterious AMD 4700S part has found its way to the wild, as part of a custom mini-ITX form factor gaming build. What exactly is this previously unknown part? it first showed up around a month ago, in a Geekbench 5 listing, which pegged it as being an 8-core/16-thread processor with a 3.6GHz base clock and 4GHz boost clock. The benchmark listing also pointed to 8MB of L3 cache. Have a look... Click to Enlarge (Source: Geekbench) Notice that the full name is "AMD 4700S Desktop Kit" in the benchmark...
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Today's dedicated game consoles share a whole bunch of DNA with their PC brethren, such as Zen 2 CPU cores and RDNA 2 graphics hardware, with support for real-time ray tracing. In addition to sharing hardware characteristics, AMD today announced it is making available its FidelityFX family of effects to the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S. AMD's announcement is great for a couple of reasons. One of them is easier cross-platform coding, with FidelityFX now being injected into AMD's Game Developer Kit (GDK) for the Xbox Series X/S. It should also be noted that these are highly optimized, open source tools that developers are free to modify, and now available across PC and console. "This news makes...
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It seems there are simulator games for just about anything you can think of, such as Granny Simulator, Thief Simulator, and even a PC building simulator. Now, teams from Dovetail Games, Curve Digital, and Skyhook Games are bringing what could be the hottest simulator game this summer: Lawn Mowing Simulator. Later this year, players will be able to “enjoy the challenge and serenity of mowing the Great British countryside in a variety of modes, while ensuring cash flow of your empire remains as green as the blades you’re cutting,” according to developer Skyhook Games. New lawn care professionals will be able to visit the British countryside, large equestrian fields, castle grounds...
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High Dynamic Range (HDR) can make any video or game look infinitely better than it did before, as long as the display and content support it. To help with one half of the equation, Microsoft shipped an AutoHDR feature with the Xbox Series X and Series S consoles, which automatically upgraded backward compatible games from SDR to HDR. Now, a preview of the feature is coming to PC, which will allow for automatic “awesome HDR visuals on an additional 1,000+ DirectX 11 and DirectX 12 games.” As Microsoft explains, HDR is a technique whereby light and dark spots in a “digitally reproduced scene can be shown with more detail than before.” When it comes to video games, gamers...
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Microsoft is currently testing a way to increase download speeds on its Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S game consoles, and if all goes to plan, the feature will roll out to the public in the not-too-distant future (fingers crossed, anyway). For now, however, it is only available to members of Microsoft's Xbox Insider program. Here's the deal—when you are playing a game, any downloads you might have queued up in the background are potentially slowed down. As such, the latest test build in the Xbox Insider Program includes a new "Suspend my game" toggle. According to Microsoft, enabling it can "help improve download speeds," albeit at the expense of playing whatever title you had loaded up....
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Microsoft recently implemented FPS Boost for its Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X game consoles. FPS Boost allows games initially designed for previous-generation Xbox hardware to leverage the superior hardware of the Xbox Series S/X for improved performance. In many cases, FPS Boost can double the frame rate of supported games. Last week, Microsoft announced that it completed its acquisition of Bethesda Game Studios' parent company ZeniMax. And one of the latest benefits of that new relationship is FPS Boost support for five legacy games: Dishonored: Definitive Edition, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition, Fallout 4, Fallout 76, and Prey. Microsoft says that this FPS Boost support...
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We have a few great gaming deals for all of you gamers out there today to enjoy. We aren't limiting these deals to a single console, as you'll find discounts across Nintendo Switch, Xbox, and PlayStation platforms. Kicking things off is Nintendo Switch Online, which is getting a discount of sorts at Best Buy. A 12-month Nintendo Switch Online membership typically costs $19.99, and that price is no different today at Best Buy. However, the retailer is throwing in a free $5 gift card, which effectively brings the price down to $14.99. This gift card offer also extends to the Nintendo Switch Online Family Membership, which covers up to 8 users. Not only does Nintendo Switch online give you access...
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In the near future, your Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S will likely be able to play Google Stadia games, simply because of its built-in web browser. Specifically, it is being infused with the latest version of Edge, built on Chromium, the same engine that powers Google's own Chrome browser. That brings with it unofficial support for Stadia. As things officially stand, Chrome is the only browser that officially supports Stadia, Google's cloud game streaming service. However, it does actually work on some other browsers, with Google noting in a support page that it "may" play nice with Chromium-based browsers like Edge (version 79 or higher), Brave, or Vivaldi. And therein lies the reason why Stadia...
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