Gamers, take note: Xbox Series X blows Xbox One out of the water in tech demos

Gamers rejoice! While some may be stuck at home under lock and key as they complete old games and dig through new ones in the wake of the coronavirus, those looking for a new console — or those impressed with meaty technical specifications — have a few new demonstrations to salivate over from Microsoft's upcoming Xbox Series X. The forthcoming console, which will jump a generation along with Sony's PlayStation 5, has long boasted computational abilities more in line with a top-rated gaming PC than a traditional console, but now that the Series X is getting closer to its launch, gamers can see some exact figures — and watch how the affect gameplay.

Over on the official Xbox site, the numbers and acronyms flow freely. Terabytes, teraflops, and something called Xbox Velocity Architecture. The latter is some kind of "new architecture optimized for streaming of in game assets," which will allow for open world games like Red Dead Redemption 2 to generate its world and its inhabitants much more easily, but what does the rest mean? Well, games will be loading much quicker now than on the Xbox One — or even the much more powerful updated version, the Xbox One X. Showing off the Series X's power, specifically features like its solid-state drive, one video pitted the Xbox One X against its replacement...and the results speak for themselves.

Check it out:

It's not even close. State of Decay 2 more than half a minute longer on the next-gen console. But maybe that's not impressive enough. Maybe there needs to be no loading screen at all. Xbox Series X also dropped a video showing off a feature that does just that: Quick Resume.

Take a look:

This is the feature that allows players to effectively pause their game, swap to another game (or another, or another, or another), then return to the first game without going through the tedium of starting it up, loading things, or choosing a save file. Using a similar UI to the Xbox One, players can automatically hop back into games they'd left off, even if the console had been turned off in between.

Other features highlighted in the dense deep dive included the Series X's DirectX Raytracing (used to create hyper-realistic depictions of light and sound), seen through a Minecraft fireplace's casting of shadows, and reduced latency, through new options like Auto Low Latency Mode and Variable Refresh Rate in addition to its raw power. “The team has also been working with the industry’s leading TV manufacturers for the past two years to ensure the display ecosystem is ready for the features coming with Xbox Series X,” Microsoft’s Will Tuttle said.

The console is expected to launch later this year.