Xbox One X review: HDR colors with 4K look great, sizable performance improvements for few select games, but is expensive and has limited value without a 4K TV
Is Microsoft's “true 4K” console worth $100 more than the PS4 Pro? — When the Xbox One launched in 2013 …
Context & Ripple Effects
This review closes a loop Microsoft opened more than a year earlier: the Xbox One S review explicitly punted on recommending that console because the more powerful Project Scorpio was coming in 2017, and the June Xbox One X announcement set the $499 price and November 7 ship date now being judged. Sony faced the same fork first — its PS4 Pro review found the most powerful home console yet was still not a must-have for owners of 1080p TVs.
First-order effects
- Buyers with 4K HDR sets get the most powerful console on the market for $499, while everyone else is paying a $100 premium over the PS4 Pro for improvements they cannot see.
- Microsoft's own pre-order strategy — the limited 'Project Scorpio' edition — bet early demand comes from enthusiasts who already own 4K displays, not the mainstream base.
Second-order effects
- Sony's $399 PS4 Pro becomes the default recommendation for anyone without a 4K TV, forcing Microsoft to justify the price gap through native-4K performance rather than features alone.
- Publishers face pressure to ship enhanced patches for a small set of games on two mid-generation consoles, since the review's core caveat is that only select titles actually show sizable gains.
Third-order effects
- The mid-generation refresh is now an established pattern rather than an experiment — both platforms shipped upgraded hardware within a year of each other, gated by display ownership — pointing toward premium tiers whose value depends on the living-room screen, not the console itself.
- If power-first positioning holds, it sets up the next generation as a straight continuation: the 2020 Xbox Series X reviews in this coverage judge Microsoft's hardware on backward compatibility and performance, the same axes this review established.
The trend: Console makers have institutionalized mid-cycle premium refreshes whose value proposition is chained to 4K TV adoption, splitting each generation into a mainstream tier and an enthusiast tier.