Inside Xbox One X
HOW MICROSOFT BUILT THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL GAME CONSOLE
Source: Verge
Designer Bryan Sparks explains the inspiration for the look and feel of the modern Xbox, he says he and his team went back to 1968, when a certain landmark Stanley Kubrick film hit theaters and changed how the world saw science fiction. “We had this vision in our minds of a monolith,” Sparks says, referencing the black, slab-like machine of extraterrestrial origin in 2001: A Space Odyssey. “In the movie, every time you see the monolith, it signifies this point of advancement.”
An industrial designer by trade, Sparks has long hair and a penchant for t-shirts, jeans, and sneakers in the workplace. Couple that with his tall wiry frame and he looks more like a professional skateboarder than the aesthetic mastermind behind Microsoft’s gaming hardware. The way he sees it, the signature look of last year’s gleaming white Xbox One S spoke to that idea of technological progress. It’s a look that the design team knew they had to keep when they designed the new, much more powerful Xbox One X, even more of a monolith with its matte black finish. Still, what Microsoft didn’t want “was for this to be a big block,” Sparks adds.
When discussing how he and his team designed the Xbox One X, Sparks says the process revolved around one pivotal benchmark. The new console had to be compact, more so than any comparable PC. In fact, it would need to be even smaller than the Xbox One S, itself a slim version of the original Xbox One. There was one big issue: the new console wouldn’t just have to be smaller, it also needed to be 40 percent more powerful.
To tell the story of how its Xbox team accomplished such a feat, Microsoft invited us up to its Redmond, Washington headquarters to give an inside look at the design process behind the Xbox One X. But the company was also willing to go beyond the question of how and into the question of why — why make such a device, and why now?
It’s a familiar arrangement. Since 2013, with the less-than-stellar Xbox One launch, Microsoft has sold the media, and by extension the public, on a message of redemption. Eager to explain its course corrections and transparent in acknowledging where it went wrong, Microsoft executives have in the past laid bare the corporate strategies behind its biggest gambles, like the (now failed) attempt at using the Xbox One as a Trojan horse for the living room and the more recent merging of its Xbox and Windows platforms. Starting in June of 2016, the company has seemingly gone all in on yet another promise: that the next Xbox console might be the last, at least as we think of console hardware generations today.
The Xbox One X, formerly known as Project Scorpio and arriving November 7th for $499, comes with what sounds like a simple pitch: to create the most powerful game console ever made. But that pitch becomes much more complicated when you take into account the industry the new console will live in. The device is an improvement, but it does not offer the same type of leap consumers saw when gaming jumped from 2D to 3D, from 64 bits to 128 bits, or from standard definition to high definition. Instead, the One X offers 4K gaming at higher frame rates, so long as you have a capable television set and so long as the game you’re playing has been optimized to take advantage of the new horsepower. It will not, as some fans had longingly hoped, play Steam games or run a full version of Windows 10.
Source: Verge
Designer Bryan Sparks explains the inspiration for the look and feel of the modern Xbox, he says he and his team went back to 1968, when a certain landmark Stanley Kubrick film hit theaters and changed how the world saw science fiction. “We had this vision in our minds of a monolith,” Sparks says, referencing the black, slab-like machine of extraterrestrial origin in 2001: A Space Odyssey. “In the movie, every time you see the monolith, it signifies this point of advancement.”
An industrial designer by trade, Sparks has long hair and a penchant for t-shirts, jeans, and sneakers in the workplace. Couple that with his tall wiry frame and he looks more like a professional skateboarder than the aesthetic mastermind behind Microsoft’s gaming hardware. The way he sees it, the signature look of last year’s gleaming white Xbox One S spoke to that idea of technological progress. It’s a look that the design team knew they had to keep when they designed the new, much more powerful Xbox One X, even more of a monolith with its matte black finish. Still, what Microsoft didn’t want “was for this to be a big block,” Sparks adds.
When discussing how he and his team designed the Xbox One X, Sparks says the process revolved around one pivotal benchmark. The new console had to be compact, more so than any comparable PC. In fact, it would need to be even smaller than the Xbox One S, itself a slim version of the original Xbox One. There was one big issue: the new console wouldn’t just have to be smaller, it also needed to be 40 percent more powerful.
To tell the story of how its Xbox team accomplished such a feat, Microsoft invited us up to its Redmond, Washington headquarters to give an inside look at the design process behind the Xbox One X. But the company was also willing to go beyond the question of how and into the question of why — why make such a device, and why now?
It’s a familiar arrangement. Since 2013, with the less-than-stellar Xbox One launch, Microsoft has sold the media, and by extension the public, on a message of redemption. Eager to explain its course corrections and transparent in acknowledging where it went wrong, Microsoft executives have in the past laid bare the corporate strategies behind its biggest gambles, like the (now failed) attempt at using the Xbox One as a Trojan horse for the living room and the more recent merging of its Xbox and Windows platforms. Starting in June of 2016, the company has seemingly gone all in on yet another promise: that the next Xbox console might be the last, at least as we think of console hardware generations today.
The Xbox One X, formerly known as Project Scorpio and arriving November 7th for $499, comes with what sounds like a simple pitch: to create the most powerful game console ever made. But that pitch becomes much more complicated when you take into account the industry the new console will live in. The device is an improvement, but it does not offer the same type of leap consumers saw when gaming jumped from 2D to 3D, from 64 bits to 128 bits, or from standard definition to high definition. Instead, the One X offers 4K gaming at higher frame rates, so long as you have a capable television set and so long as the game you’re playing has been optimized to take advantage of the new horsepower. It will not, as some fans had longingly hoped, play Steam games or run a full version of Windows 10.
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