Xbox Series X / S

I have some thoughts about my series x experience, and to be honest I'm only posting because the power is out and I'm being baked alive.

The controller takes some getting used to. I went through the same thing when I went from an Xbox 360 controller to a PS4 controller. I am still convinced that the Xbox controllers feel more solid and a better quality. The Xbox controller is like holding a tank. But at the same time, the menu / share buttons on the DS4 feel better placed. I can't comment on the dual sense though. Fire the most part, I am over the learning curve of the repositioned dpad so the Xbox controller is starting to feel normal.

I am still undecided on the battery choices both went with. I thought the DS4 going with the built in one was lame when I got it. But now I realise that plugging in a controller is a tiny bit less work than removing batteries, placing on charger, and then putting them back once they've charged. It's real nitpicking here. Far from a deal breaker. The play and charge kits would solve this of course, but I have spent enough for now, so maybe one day :D

On the quick resume feature, I wasn't really blown away when MS brought out info on it, and reviews appeared mentioning it. On the one hand, I kind of feel like fast loading is an expectation when it comes to this sort of hardware. But after a week or two of switching between many games, some just loading fast, and others actually supporting it properly, I get it now.

Perhaps I should have mentioned this earlier, but I have played very few series x enhanced games. I went in knowing I'd be playing older games to start with, but I do look forward to some new titles that'll show the true power of it one day.

A game that really impressed me is Star Wars: Squadrons. It's a series x enhanced title, and you can play a bit of the campaign with EA play. It looked absolutely gorgeous. It boggles my mind how a console can target 4K60 and still have visuals that look so good. I never thought I'd be keen on that sort of game, but I see me buying it in the near future.The flight controls really take some getting used to. I had to tweak things a lot, but ended with a pretty good setup.

If you have played the campaign of Battlefront 2, the flight controls are much the same. But they have really improved it in squadrons. So much so that I find it difficult to compare. And that sort of gets me into the back compat thoughts.

Things obviously run well, and load times are quick. It's pretty safe to say that most of my experience at the moment is with back compat games (battlefront 2, battlefield v, Jedi fallen order, doom eternal, man of Medan). I am quite impressed that they managed to pull off that level of graphics with the one X, assuming that most are one X enhanced anyway. There are telltale signs of it being back compat in some games though, like arb pop in on Jedi fallen order.

Some brief reviews of some games:

* Jedi fallen order: the bomb, and I'm sad that it's over
* Battlefront 2: bit of a drag, maybe I'm too early in the campaign to get a good idea of it
* Battlefield v: campaign is a drag. Is it just me or were the stories in battlefield 1 better?
* Doom: FFS more ammo please
* Man of Medan: very much in the style of Until Dawn (which was a seriously messed up story). I am waiting for people to start dying. I am not sure why I'm playing this because I can't stand horrors
* Gears 4. Oh gosh, I am reaching my limit of how many hoards of enemies I can handle.
* Tetris effects: now this was fantastic. It's a serious in betweener game. Also played a bit with a friend.
* Call of the sea: too early to give an opinion

Now my plan with gears was to watch recaps of the first 3 games, get through 4 because of it being fairly new, and then enjoy 5. I tried the first game way back when on my 360 and got bored. They have certainly improved the entertainment value, and things graphically aren't near as dull (I am still wondering why older games thought that dull orange tint wasa good style), but it is a bit of a struggle. I am plodding on though. The characters are quite likeable and the story has potential.

Now I want to mention my experience with Tetris and it'll lead into a bit of a complaint. But I can't blame Microsoft here. I don't really know who to blame really. A mate on PC with gamepass discovered we could invite each other and jam Tetris together. We wasted many hours competing against each other. It was great. Things went pear a few days ago when it stopped working, and I'm not sure what's up there but by then I was pretty over it.

Now, gamepass has some great co-op games such as A Way out, and unravelled 2, the latest Wolfenstein game (forgot the name). But cross play is questionable. I spent many minutes looking into what is cross play and my conclusion is: very specific games I'm not interested in.It seems to be games like BFV (multiplayer), Fortnite, etc that are the chosen ones. This is hugely disappointing if I'm honest. Most of my friends are hardcore PC gamers, so being able to jam these together would have been epic. Either my Google foo is off, or information on cross platform games is very thin. I kind of expected it to just work for some reason, because of the whole play anywhere philosophy they have. I am putting it down to expecting too much.

Something quite small but really impressed me was that screen in the settings that shows if your TV is setup with your Xbox properly and what the TV supports. I thought that was a nice touch.

Something I found odd was Microsoft's choice of interface layout. I think I'm too much used to all my games being on one line with the PS4. The layout of the Xbox dashboard I find quite odd, even now. The recent menu is handy. And I frequently visit the apps and games section. Adding stuff to the home screen, which effectively makes it one long list if you want to pin many games, is just weird. It is not for me. I have grouped all my streaming apps though, and that made things a bit convenient. What I find odd is why they add a shortcut to groups as the first item.

I must also say that the most noticeable thing after the power and speed difference compared to my old PS4 Pro and laptop is the noise. This thing is absolutely dead silent. If it were not for the led in front I wouldn't know it was on. My old Pro sounds like a turbine. My laptop is even worse. I have only ever heard it once when I mistakenly put pieces of paper on top of the vent when doing stuff. It made an odd whirring sound. Felt like a tit when I realised what I'd done :D

My next mission is to get a remote that'll work with the Xbox. I'm going to look at some suggested in this thread. I am hoping to have one remote to rule them all, and retire my TVs smarts, because Samsung has abandoned updating the firmware and it's getting a bit slow now.

So to end off, there are absolutely no regrets. I knew what I was buying into. There is the odd minor disappointment here and there, but there are nothing more than that. For me, it is a fairly high end gaming pc replacement, at a much more reasonable cost, and it feels very much like that.
 
No ragrets here either :D
Got the little guy hooked on Rocket League, the little guy + little girl hooked on Lego Indiana Jones, the missus on Unravel 2 (co-op). Going solo it's been mostly Forza for me, and then if the XBox is occupied I've gone through Mechwarrior 5 (only half way cause the grind got boring), Slay the Spire and now mostly Endless Space (4X games are my cocaine).
I've installed a lot more on the console though, so the little ones can experiment as they wish (and they do, which is awesomesauce). Gamepass (even though I've paid for 3 years) has basically already paid for itself in the first month as far as I'm concerned :D
 
So I managed to get the xbox series x to stream to my PC, so that I can still game, even though the TV is occupied... the normal xbox companion app does not work since it complains that some streaming option is not enabled on the xbox.

So you need to install & run the Xbox Game Streaming (Test App). It can be download via this link down-loader - just dump the URL above into it, and make sure you get this one: Microsoft.XboxGameStreaming-ContentTest_1.2011.3001.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.appxbundle

From there you just run/install, and presto. My PC was close enough to the xbox, so my controller still picked up without any issues. The stats showed that I streamed at about 12mbps, and I could not detect any noticeable lag etc.
 
So I managed to get the xbox series x to stream to my PC, so that I can still game, even though the TV is occupied... the normal xbox companion app does not work since it complains that some streaming option is not enabled on the xbox.

So you need to install & run the Xbox Game Streaming (Test App). It can be download via this link down-loader - just dump the URL above into it, and make sure you get this one: Microsoft.XboxGameStreaming-ContentTest_1.2011.3001.0_neutral_~_8wekyb3d8bbwe.appxbundle

From there you just run/install, and presto. My PC was close enough to the xbox, so my controller still picked up without any issues. The stats showed that I streamed at about 12mbps, and I could not detect any noticeable lag etc.
any idea how to set up the controller to work?
It's connecting fine to my PC (and also my ipad), but i can't control the xbox .
 
any idea how to set up the controller to work?
It's connecting fine to my PC (and also my ipad), but i can't control the xbox .
Via the streaming app? I just connected it now for the first time, paired via bluetooth, and had to exit/restart the game I was in before it started working. Did not do anything special?
 
Odd issue happening. So i had no issue playing 4k movies through plex or usb but yesterday after pausing wonder woman, the video quality just went through the windows. Its now showing me green with lots of odd block, almost like scratch dvd look. I noticed now that all .265 does the same, only .264 works, even 1080p .265 video files doesnt work. I have tried the normal player, vlc, plex, nothing works.
 
Odd issue happening. So i had no issue playing 4k movies through plex or usb but yesterday after pausing wonder woman, the video quality just went through the windows. Its now showing me green with lots of odd block, almost like scratch dvd look. I noticed now that all .265 does the same, only .264 works, even 1080p .265 video files doesnt work. I have tried the normal player, vlc, plex, nothing works.
Have you tried restarting the console?

Personally I use Kodi on the Series X after having some problems with one video with VLC.
 
Have you tried restarting the console?

Personally I use Kodi on the Series X after having some problems with one video with VLC.
I have not.... i actually hope that doesnt solve it or else ill be kicking myself
 
Odd issue happening. So i had no issue playing 4k movies through plex or usb but yesterday after pausing wonder woman, the video quality just went through the windows. Its now showing me green with lots of odd block, almost like scratch dvd look. I noticed now that all .265 does the same, only .264 works, even 1080p .265 video files doesnt work. I have tried the normal player, vlc, plex, nothing works.
This is actually a known issue with plex on both PS5 and series X. I've been browsing the plex forum every so often to see how plex is doing on the PS5 as I will be getting one next year but this green screen is an issue for everyone using .265. Seems to be affecting PS5 more than the series X but still a problem on both and hope they fix this soon.
 
Using Real-Debrid on Kodi also sucks for me

Seems like any stream larger than 1.5GB causes the Xbox to crash back to the home screen.

We need an update ASAP
 
This is actually a known issue with plex on both PS5 and series X. I've been browsing the plex forum every so often to see how plex is doing on the PS5 as I will be getting one next year but this green screen is an issue for everyone using .265. Seems to be affecting PS5 more than the series X but still a problem on both and hope they fix this soon.

The PS5 app has some playback problems at present but there is an update being worked on, I'm just not sure when that will come out as there are issues that are being worked out with Sony. The media support on the PS5 is just not great to begin and if you're using an HDR display it forces everything to HDR unless you manually turn off HDR every time which is really not ideal (this affects all media apps including Plex).

I've found the Xbox SX to be quite a competent media player though, not the best but certainly much better than the PS5.
 
Also setting the display options to 120hz 4K gives me a black screen - have to hard restart console and revert to 60hz 4K

TV in question does support 120hz/4K in theory (HDMI 2.1) - Samsung QLED Q70T
Also, using the high speed cable incl in the box
 
Also setting the display options to 120hz 4K gives me a black screen - have to hard restart console and revert to 60hz 4K

TV in question does support 120hz/4K in theory (HDMI 2.1) - Samsung QLED Q70T
Also, using the high speed cable incl in the box
I use Belkin ultra high speed cables

 
I use Belkin ultra high speed cables

The 1 included in the box is an Ultra High Speed cable so not sure what else could be the issue
 
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