Xbox Series X versus PC: next-gen specs could spark a rivalry


You've probably already seen the newly released details about Microsoft’s Xbox Series X specs.

This console is the incoming successor to the Xbox One, and it is tentatively scheduled to come out this holiday season.

But with the hardware specs placing it as twice the power as the Xbox One that came before it, it’s looking more and more like an accessible Gaming PC for the masses; one that will be pre-built and suited to someone’s needs to play a game in their front room.

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No need to make sure the right DirectX packages and the right drivers are installed; everything's ready to go.

But for the price of a Series X, which is rumoured to come in at around £400, how does it compare to a Gaming PC that could be built for £600?

This won’t be a barrage of technical-teraflops and processing-computing, but it will be an overview as to how it rivals the most-powerful Gaming PC’s.

If you were to build a PC that had:

  • 16GB DDR4 Memory
  • 1TB Hard Drive
  • Ryzen 3400G
  • 600W PSU

Alongside the usual case and peripherals, you would be looking at around £500, which for example, can play any game on Steam from the beginning of Pong to the recent Call Of Duty: Warzone at varying frame rates and resolutions.

For many out there, this is the ideal scenario; it’s total control on the gaming machine that you have either bought or built to your choosing, and in the future, you can improve it by replacing certain components if you wish.

But when it comes to the Xbox, developers have a specific brief, in tailoring their game to the console and its concrete-specs, so the game can run to the best of its ability.

All a user would have to do, across the whole lifetime of owning a Series X, would be to buy the game from a store or from the XBOX Marketplace, or download it from GamesPass if it was available there, and that would be it.

There may be a small factor of making sure there’s some space available on the 1TB SSD, but the Xbox can easily let you know of the storage that’s available, and what may need to be deleted if that was the case.

But it’s the ease of use to, not just the developer, but the gamer that the Xbox appeals to, but with the latest specs (at that current time) to play around with.

There will most-likely be thousands-upon-thousands of Series X models in many front rooms across the world, all with the same specs and design. It’s the kind of consistency a Gaming PC just doesn’t have.

When it comes to the design of the Series X, the form-factor makes it ideal to be placed in a living room, with the ‘pick up and play’ aspect of the console available to perform when needed.

It can also power down and manage game updates when the user is away doing errands. It also looks great beside a fridge if you decide to put one in your front room as well.

With a PC, it’s still a tower. A tower that isn’t as compact as a Series X. Granted, there are mini-ATX cases, but it’s limited in the components that can be installed, and it’s not recommended for a beginner if they’ve decided to build a PC from scratch.

Of course, Backwards-Compatibility is a rising theme for this generation, with hopes that Sony will bring something similar to the PlayStation 5, after giving a half-hearted attempt with the PS4.

There were demos shown earlier, with Gears of War running natively on the Series X. But let’s not forget, it can also be played on the Xbox app on PC, and the improvements can, and in theory, already be seen on the PC.

But of course, Microsoft has certain trump cards, with no-less than Rare’s fantastic library from yesteryear, and ‘Rare Replay’ almost-certainly appearing on the Series X in an enhanced form, with Banjo Kazooie, Blast Corps, both the Perfect Dark games, and many more, ready to go on the Xbox.

Let’s not forget, the Xbox is an all-in-one package. Everything, from the latency of a button press of the controller, to the memory management of the 1TB Storage and the 16GB DDR6 Memory, everything is meant to work with one another in perfect harmony.

But with a PC, you have full control over what component can be installed, and certain games that will always have a minimal chance of coming to Xbox, ready to play.

Overall, the Xbox Series X is a massive contender for Gaming PC’s across the high-ranges, with an incredibly fast SSD drive, a next-generation GPU and CPU from AMD, and full backwards-compatibility with all previous generations of XBOX.

But if you want an all-in-one PC that can play all the games of yesteryear on your 8TB hard drive with an RGB setup, you may as well wait to see some of the games be enhanced for Games Pass PC.

Can the newly-revealed PS5 specs keep up?

For more articles like this, take a look at our Hardware, Next-Gen, and PC Building pages.