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The Xbox One X Feels Like It's Missing Something

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I’ve been playing around with my new Xbox One X the past few days. I like it. I like how tiny it is. I like how there’s no more power brick. I like how I really do notice visual improvements and decreased load times in many games. I even like the current iteration of the Xbox UI, which I haven’t seen given that I hadn’t turned my Xbox One on in a long time.

But testing the system has been…a little strange. The “best” games that fully show off the improvements of the Xbox One X are titles like Gears of War 4 and Rise of the Tomb Raider, which came out in 2016 and 2015 respectively. I’ve dipped in, mucked around in whatever final level my last save file was in, and moved on. I’m not going to replay these start to finish, nor am I going to replay or re-buy all the biggest hits of this fall when I’ve already played them through on the PS4 Pro, which at the time was the best option.

That leaves…Forza 7, and a few stragglers I didn’t pick up on PlayStation like Wolfenstein or a few games where I got double review codes like Destiny 2. This is why I said that the Xbox One X should have come out in early September, before this deluge of titles were released and everyone played through them already on PS4/PS4 Pro/Xbox One. Going back and replaying already-played games that are weeks or years old is not really the most fun way to test out a powerful new console. Neither is squinting really hard at side-by-side Digital Foundry videos, as much as I appreciate their commitment to rigorous technical testing.

Hence, what I feel like the Xbox One X is missing. Not a larger hard drive (but also that), but an exclusive launch title that really would have shown off the power of this thing from moment one. It doesn’t have that, and quite frankly, I’m not even sure when it will have that, looking at Microsoft’s upcoming line-up.

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Am I asking for Crackdown 3? Not exactly. Originally, Crackdown 3 was supposed to literally be Xbox One X’s launch game, released on November 7th as well. But it’s been delayed to 2018, and frankly, that may have been for the best. First of all, with its rather cartoony animation style, it certainly does not feel like the type of game to show off the type of visuals we now see in Gears and Tomb Raider. Secondly, I have a hunch that Crackdown 3 might not be…very…good if its tumultuous production schedule and early footage are any indication. Releasing that as a launch game could have backfired.

So I guess I’m talking about projects like Gears 5 and Halo 6, which would be on the scale I’m thinking of, and would show off visual and performance improvements the best. But as you can tell by the ludicrously high numbers next to those games, the two series have started to suffer from franchise exhaustion from some time now (we’re actually on five Gears games already and eight Halo games, if you count titles like Judgement/ODST/Reach).

I suppose what I’m looking for is Microsoft’s answer to Horizon Zero Dawn, the first game Sony came out with that really popped on PS4 Pro and seemed to prove the concept. But there’s nothing like that here at launch, and nothing in the pipeline either, from what I can tell.

Yes, it’s true that Sony didn’t release HZD at the launch of the PS4 Pro, and that the Pro also really didn’t have a true launch title for it. But A) I have never claimed that Sony has done a great job promoting the PS4 Pro; they haven’t and B) The Xbox One X is a much more dramatic leap forward from the Xbox One than the Pro was from the PS4. As such, it should be able to showcase that with a must-have Xbox-only title, one that will have no mostly-similar equivalent on PS4 Pro.

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If there’s one game that might be able to do what I’m talking about for Xbox One X here it’s probably going to be Star Wars Battlefront 2, which is out next week, is not an Xbox One exclusive but has promotional deals with Microsoft, and will probably be the best-looking game of the year. As one of the only major games to be released after the launch of Xbox One X this fall, it could be the “wow” moment that someone like me is looking for, rather than forcing me to hunt through old games to get a sense of the visual changes.

Still, I really hope Microsoft is able to get back on the hardware horse. Sony has just so many impressive exclusives at this point that it can potentially outweigh even a massive power advantage like what the Xbox One X is offering. If Microsoft can figure out how to crawl back to having a dynamite first party line-up, the entire narrative of this console generation could change.

The Xbox One X is great, and Microsoft is now king of horsepower mountain once again. But there’s more work to be done now on the software side, or else it might all be for naught.

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