After spending several months telling myself that I wouldn’t buy an Xbox Series X and watching other people struggle to buy next generation consoles, I gave in and bought an Xbox Series X. That was a few weeks ago and recently I’m starting to wonder if that was a good idea.
I’m not going to lie: the decision to buy an Xbox Series X was 100 percent an impulse purchase, not the result of spending weeks trying to locate a console that didn’t come from a money changer. UK retailer Argos took some stock and, in the typical next-generation fashion, sold out almost immediately. Except for a store, about a 30-minute drive, which miraculously still had a few available.
A few days and 40 miles driving, I was rearranging the top of my TV unit to accommodate the grown brick that is the Xbox Series X. Hurray! Right? Maybe not, because for the next few weeks I did almost nothing with him.
It’s been almost everything but a game console
In the weeks since I connected my new Xbox, I have made very few real games on it. Which is strange when you consider how many games can be played on a state-of-the-art Xbox. There are 20 years of things to enjoy, and all I’m using is to reproduce 4K Blu-rays. When I’m not trying to sync my old saved files to the cloud, that’s it.
The craziest thing is that I already had an Xbox One S and was perfectly capable of playing 4K discs. It might not be exactly the same quality as a dedicated 4K machine, but it reproduced them and took up only about half of the X Series space in the process.
What bothers me most is that I rarely have more time for games. Certainly not on TV, which is why I like the Nintendo Switch so much. It allows me to choose a game whenever I want, wherever I am.
I can cast the Xbox Series X to my phone, and very easily, but it’s not quite the same. I still feel like I should be sitting on the couch, in front of the TV, with a controller in my hands. Especially since many of the games I have are large, expansive games that benefit from a much broader view of the world.
These games also seem to take an enormous amount of time and effort to get inside. I found this out firsthand when loading my Fallout 4 rescue, and realized that I hadn’t played the game in four years and had no idea what was going on. I was also shocked to discover that Elder Maxson was still alive, although I am pretty sure that I killed him to get that beautiful coat he wears. Furthermore, I clearly remember finishing the game and destroying the Institute. But somehow it’s still there.
It was good to run and check out the community at 60fps. But the fact that I’m an adult with a busy adult schedule that doesn’t include much time for games is still one of those things that makes me wonder why I bothered to get the X Series
The lack of exclusivity does not help
Console exclusives are generally very rare at the start of a new generation, and it doesn’t matter if you are the proud owner of a PS5 or Xbox Series X. We have been in the new cycle for less than a year, and all platform exclusives too are available on older consoles.
The fact that I have an Xbox Series X now does not open up any new gaming opportunities for me. Because all the games I could go out and buy would work on my old console. It’s an amazing thing when you think about it, because the same disk is capable of running on two different generations of hardware
This kind of compatibility with future versions has never been done before, and even in the glory days of the PS2 it was impossible to put a PS3 game on a PS2 and expect it to work. Even the PS5 sells separate discs for its exclusives, like Spider-Man: Miles Morales. It is an impressive display of technology and a consumer friendly practice that you would never have expected from a company like Microsoft ten years ago.
Of course. the downside is that I could easily take a copy of something like Crash Bandicoot 4 and continue playing on my Xbox One. The only big difference is that the Xbox Series X is capable of running at 4K 60fps. That’s a big step from the original Xbox One and Xbox One S that I still have around, but it’s not like I’m missing out on a lot.
The same goes for the Game Pass, as all of these titles are multigenerational. The X Series may look and play these games better, but it’s not like I’m not able to play them without it.
It definitely doesn’t help that Microsoft seems much more committed to supporting Xbox One in the future. It’s great that players don’t feel the pressure to update if they really don’t want to. But at the same time, it also decreases the value of the new console. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S were a little easier to find than the PS5.
Despite this, I do not regret
But when I start to question my decision a lot, I am reminded of one thing: just because I haven’t played the console yet, it doesn’t mean that I never will. There will come a time when I desperately want a state-of-the-art console, and now I am ready. As the old saying goes, it is better to have something and not need it, than to need it and not have it.
Then again, whoever coined that saying probably referred to emergency supplies or something like that. No $ 499 game consoles. But, hey, I’m not going to play Halo Infinite on anything less than 4K, which is something to look forward to. As long as Microsoft doesn’t seriously regret jumping in early, launching a limited edition console design that looks much better than the current matte black refrigerator.
In addition, the X Series has already taught me things I never knew about my TV. Like the fact that Samsung TVs at that time (the days of 2016) did not have HDR enabled by default. I only found this out because the Xbox kept claiming that I wasn’t using an HDR10-compatible screen.
It turns out that you need to delve deep into the settings and activate the HDR for each individual HDMI port. And yet, it is not labeled as something tangibly related to HDR. Samsung hoped that you just knew, or at least that someone on a forum somewhere was pointing you in the right direction. So this is certainly a victory for Microsoft, and another thing that I can defend against Samsung. This win may not be worth $ 500 alone, but it is a win nonetheless.
I may wonder why I spent so much money on a brand-new console that I barely touched it at times, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I have serious buyer remorse. I just need to manage my time better and find some games that make me a little more anxious to get that control.