Xbox One X Enhanced Games: Here's The Starting List
At this year's Gamescom, Microsoft opened the doors just a wee bit for the Xbox One X, specifically with preorders for the very limited Scorpio Edition. The first question to cross anyone's mind, save perhaps for the staunchest Xbox supporter, is "why bother?". Microsoft's answer is in the Xbox One X's "enhanced experience" made possible by improvements to the hardware as well as developers' access to such hardware. Such enhancements, however, can only really be experienced through these enhanced titles that Microsoft has just revealed.
The Xbox One X doesn't simply play the specs game. Sure there is definitely some of that at play here, especially with the 12 GB DDR5 memory, promised 40% increase in performance, and support for the highest and latest standards in both video and audio content. All of that packed in what Microsoft says is the smallest console they've ever made.
Hardware, however, is only half the story of any computing system, even one designed for gaming. Software, in this case games, matter just as much as the hardware. In the case of the Xbox One X, that meant that developers have even more access to system memory and processor than ever before, allowing them to utilize the 6 teraflop graphics processing power and 326 GB/s memory bandwidth the console offers.
The downside to all these is that games will have to be written to actually take advantage of all those new features. Not a problem for titles that were developed or are still being developed with the Xbox One X in mind. It is, however, a problem for a console that promises compatibility with "normal" Xbox One games. That is why Microsoft has published a list that support these enhanced features. Which is to say, games that will run spectacularly on the Xbox One X. Or at least that's the promise.
As of this writing, that list spans 118 titles but don't be floored immediately. Some of these games, like EA's Anthem or Microsoft Studios' own Crackdown 3, are still coming later this year or even much later. It's still a sizable roster that tries to inpsire confidence that the Xbox One X won't just be a superpowered console that barely no game will be able to take advantage of when it launches in November.
SOURCE: Major Nelson