Phil Spencer Remains Confident In Xbox Series X Launch Supply, Talks Killer App For Next Gen Gaming
In the case of the Xbox Series X, Xbox Chief Phil Spencer seems confident that at launch, there will be enough consoles to go around. "In our supply chain, we feel good about the hardware side," said Spencer, while speaking with none other than former Nintendo of America chief Reggie Fils-Aime on his new Talking Games podcast. "It feels like we'll be able to get enough units. We're pretty committed, as we've talked about to a worldwide launch, which regretfully, we didn't do with Xbox One.
"You remember watching that from Nintendo campus. It took us months and months to hit some of the incredibly important markets and worldwide launch is important to us."
In addition to its initial supply issues, the Xbox One's pre-launch was also marred by a controversial always-on DRM scheme that angered gamers. Following the immense backlash, Microsoft eventually dropped the DRM requirement, but the animosity lingered through the opening months of Xbox One availability.
Microsoft, however, hasn't encountered any significant controversy -- yet -- with its Xbox Series X, which is definitely a good thing for the company.
Spencer went on in the podcast to describe the challenge that Microsoft has in explaining to customers why upgrading to a next-generation console will be so beneficial; especially when it comes to higher and more fluid frame rates. The "killer app", so to speak, is the ability to play games at 60 FPS, or even as high as 120 FPS.
"One of the things I've talked about publicly ... but it's hard to come across, is the way it feels to play games on a box where frame rates are higher, frame rates are more stable," Spencer added. "We're getting to the point where the immersion feel that you get through fluidity and other things is now up to par with the visual capabilities that we have. How do you share that with people in this kind of world?"
The Xbox Series X is powered by 3.8GHz 8-core/16-thread AMD Zen 2 CPU and Radeon RDNA 2 GPU architecture, and is backed by 16GB GDDR6 memory along with a custom 1TB NVMe PCIe 3.0 SSD. About the only thing we don't know about the console at this point is how much it will cost at launch.
