Xbox One X graphics will make you 'lose track of time'

It has been like this forever: PC gamers love their graphics and being able to turn every single in-game visual option to the maximum, and it's only just now getting to the point where consoles can push the kind of graphics we've enjoyed on PC for years and years.

With the upcoming Xbox One X, it looks like Microsoft is finally discovering that gamers do in fact enjoy high fidelity graphics. Xbox Director of Program Management, Mike Ybarra, said: "I always say to my game teams, 'Look, if you provide Dolby Atmos spatial audio, high-dynamic range, 8-million pixels on the screen, people will lose track of time because they'll be having so much fun. That immersion is really what we're after. When we created this box it was really about immersion more than anything else we wanted to do. I mean, you played Forza Horizon 3 on Windows at 4K, and we saw those images, and those things are breathtaking. When we set out, we started talking about these effects and how they impacted us. That's immersion; it is part of the magic of the entertainment industry that we're in".

Xbox boss Phil Spencer agrees with Ybarra, adding: "I was on the EA stage talking to Patrick Söderlund about Madden, and one of the things he commented on was how the grass looks, and how it moves. He said if you had somebody circle 10 things on the screen that are different about running on Xbox One X, nobody would ever pick up on that, but subconsciously, as visuals get more lifelike your brain notices when stuff like that isn't quite right. 4K can be just about the physics, maybe even just the way the trees move".

I'll chime in as well: Microsoft's boss of Xbox saying "4K can be just about the physics" has me turned off... it's just... I can't. He added that "maybe even just the way the trees move", yeah sorry Phil, unless Xbox One X amps the graphics to 11, I'm not buying it. Microsoft has always over promised with their Xbox, and I'm feeling like Xbox One X is yet another over promise. This is my personal opinion - just something I thought I'd write down into this post.

I'm all for Dolby Atmos, 4K resolution, 60FPS, anti-aliasing, Ultra level graphics, super realistic physics... but it's a console that's selling for far under $1000. We can't have these things on an $800 gaming PC, so they won't happen on Xbox One X without compromise. I'm sure we're going to see some graphics at Ultra, and most of the time at Medium in order to maintain anything above 30FPS at 4K on a tiny little APU.