TechTheDay

The Electronic Entertainment is finally here and each of the big three game companies will be having their press briefings to announce their upcoming projects and games. First on the list was Microsoft’s, which lasted almost 2 hours. Here are the highlights:

The XBOX One X

Before Phil Spencer, the head of Microsoft’s XBOX division, walked up the stage, Microsoft showed a short video of what many assumed to be Project Scorpio based on the black CPU with the XBOX logo on it. It was after his short talk that he finally introduced the official name of the new console: XBOX ONE X. Phil claims it to be the “World’s most powerful console ever made.”

Kareem Choudhry, Head of XBOX Software Engineering, claims that the new console is the result of three years of engineering with three goals in mind: “Power, Compatibility, and Craftsmanship.” Choudhry breaks down each three goals and explains each one.

• Power means that they gave the new console a 6 Teraflop GPU clocked at 1.172 Ghz, 12GB of GDDR5 memory, and 326 GBps of memory bandwith so that it would be able to deliver True 4K gaming. That means 8 million pixels with High Dynamic Range, Wide Color Gamut, Premium Dolby Atmos sound and  4K UHD Blu-Ray playback.
• Compatibility means that all the existing games and accessories for the XBOX ONE family will work on the new console. Choudhry promises to an applauding crowd that the old games will look better and load faster too.
•  Craftsmanship means that they crafted the most advanced console ever using the most advance console processor they ever made, the Scorpio Engine paired with a liquid-cooled vapor chamber. They also engineered a new power management system optimized for the console. They also crafted the new console to be the smallest XBOX ever.

The new XBOX console will be available on November 7, 2017 worldwide for $499.

Forty-two Games Coming to the XBOX

There are forty two games for this year’s lineup for the new console, twenty-two of which Phil claimed will be exclusively for the XBOX. The games presented for this year are the ff:

1. Forza Motorsports 7, available on October 3, 2017
2. Metro Exodus, a game inspired by the Metro 2033 and Metro 2035 novels by Dmitry Glukhovsky, coming in 2018
3. Assassin’s Creed Origins, available on October 27, 2017
4. Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds, coming late this year
5. Deep Rock Galactic: Danger, Darkness, Dwarves
6. State of Decay 2, slated for Spring 2018
7. The Darwin Project
8. Minecraft, coming this Fall
9. Dragonball Fighter Z
10. Black Desert
11. The Last Night
12. The Artful Escape
13. Code Vein
14. Sea of Thieves, coming in 2018
15. Tacoma, coming in August
16. Super Lucky’s Tale, coming in November 7
17. Cuphead, coming in Spetermber 29
18. Crackdown 3, coming in November 7
19. Osiris: New Dawn
20. Raiders of the Broken Planet
21. Unruly Heroes
22. Surviving Mars
23. Fable Fortune
24. Observer
25. Robocraft Infinity
26. Dunk Lordz
27. Minion Masters
28. Brawlout
29. Ooblets
30. Dark and Light
31. Strange Brigade
32. Riverbond
33. Hell Neighbor
34. Shift
35. Conan Exiles
36. Ashen
37. The episode 1 of Life is Strange: Before the Storm, coming in August 31
38. Middle Earth: Shadow of War, coming in October 10, 2017
39. Ori and the Will of the Wisps
40. Anthem, which was presented in an earlier Electronic Arts press briefing the day before

In addition, old games like Crimson Skies will be compatible to the new console and other games such as Final Fantasy XV, Resident Evil 7, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wild Lands, and Rocket League will be given enhancements for the XBOX ONE X.

Other News

Bethesda and Devolver Digital also each had a press briefing of their own on the same day. Though Devolver’s didn’t announce any new games and is sadly more like a performance show rather than an actual press briefing, Bethesda saved the day with some good traditional introduction of coming games such as Skyrim, for the Nintendo Switch, Doom VFR and Fallout 4 VR, Dishonored 2, The Evil Within 2, and Wolfenstein 2,  in the theme of an amusement park. Updates for other Bethesda games were also announced.