What’s in an Xbox? Lots apparently! If there’s one message that Microsoft seems hellbent on emphasising with their next video game console, it’s power. Pure power in a raw form that’ll pave the way for games to not only look better but perform beyond the norm and load quicker than ever before.

It’s official! With the writing on the wall being so glaringly obvious that even Mr Magoo could read it, The Entertainment Software Association pulled the plug on one of the longest running shows in video game history. For this year at least, as the group plans to bounce back in 2021 with a new E3 experience. In case you missed the announcement, here’s what the gaming industry had to say after this news broke.

The video games of tomorrow will look better in the right hands, but those upgrades will be as subtle as they are overt when well executed. That’s the opinion of several developers who sat down for a chat with IGN, detailing how next-gen power will be used to nail one aspect of game design that has eluded many a developer: Hair.

If there’s one game I’m hungry for this decade, it’s a new chapter in The Elder Scrolls. 2011’s Skyrim still stands as one of my absolute favourite sandboxes, a glorious Nordic adventure filled with swords, sorcery and ye Daedric gods so many damn loading screens. A sixth Elder Scrolls game is on the way, but as usual Bethesda is keeping …

We’re likely going to be spending a fair amount of coin on gaming console hardware for years to come, no matter what Google tells you as they attempt to sell a Stadia subscription to your face.

Over on Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb’s podcast, Director of Xbox program management Jason Ronald detailed the upcoming audio features that’ll be present within the Xbox Series X. While dedicated hardware acceleration for audio was a topic teased for GDC not too long ago (Like that’s going to be happening this year), Ronald revealed that Microsoft is taking sound design a lot more seriously with new technology that he described as audio ray tracing.

Xbox Series X: True 8K gaming, hardware accelerated sound and plenty of next-gen all packed into one attractive boom box of a console. Hot damn I am going to play the heck out of some old games on that beast of a machine!

Microsoft’s been drip-feeding information on the Xbox Series X for a while now – and that’s not really changed. They have however, given us a lot more new information on how the Xbox Series X will work, a little more information on how much compute power the machine will have, and some details on how its resuming features and backwards compatibility will work.