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Xbox One Close Up

Update:The original version of this story referred to the Xbox GPU every bit being derived from the GeForce 2 generation of GPUs. Information technology was actually a modified GeForce 3. ExtremeTech regrets the mistake.

In one case upon a time, if you lot wanted to play multiplayer on a game console, you had to exercise it with a common television set and multiple controllers. This worked plenty well, if you had the right setup — I spent more a few nights at college slugging information technology out against friends in Mario Kart — merely local multiplayer on a common screen has been superseded by remote multiplayer beyond multiple consoles in many titles.

Whether ane choice or the other is "better" is a topic best evaluated on a game-by-game basis, but plenty of gamers have wished for more cooperative or split-screen options when playing. Now, co-ordinate to Microsoft's E3 prove, some of those options are coming back to the Xbox One. Marketing director head Alex Penello confirmed in a tweet that these options would be available beyond all four Xbox platforms (the commencement Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox 1 / I Southward, and the upcoming Xbox I X).

Of class, simply because you tin can cross-play across all four products doesn't hateful this volition be the smoothest or best way to experience any given game. The Xbox 360 emulation in the Xbox I sometimes produces results that are superior to the Xbox 360's own native performance. At present, stretch that back a farther generation, to the original Xbox, and you've got a system that tin can easily exist emulated on a modern platform. The 2001 console had a single-core Pentium Three clocked at 733MHz, just 64MB of DDR RAM, and 6.4GB/south of memory bandwidth. The GPU was a GeForce 3-derived GPU with an actress vertex unit, clocked at 233MHz — all of which is to say, you could more than or less emulate the original Xbox on your average toaster.

Co-ordinate to Penello, all configuration options volition be supported. "You can actually system link an OG Xbox, an Xbox 360, an Xbox One, and an Xbox One X, and practise four-role player organization-link LAN play with all original disks beyond three generations of consoles," he said on IGN's live show.

Xbox One X

Penello also implied that some Xbox games could become a graphical upgrade when they are updated and ported to the newly backwards-uniform Xbox One. "If y'all saw Crimson Skies on the screen today, it looks great," he said. "We're non talking in item right at present, simply the team has some tricks up their sleeve, and I recollect when the OG Xbox games show up, people are going to be very impressed."

Microsoft has previously offered some details on how the Xbox 1 X could deliver improved visuals on existing Xbox Ane games at 1080p, including better antialiasing support via supersampling. Trying to update 16 year-old games to look like their best selves would exist a alpine order, however. Not only volition these games be running at much higher resolutions and on much larger screens than they were designed for, the Xbox launched at a time when CRTs, not LCDs, were still the primary screen technology available on the consumer market.

Microsoft is admittedly capable of tweaking game presentation and avails to improve the terminal output compared with what nosotros saw in 2001. Just it's not clear if the company will simply do this via some filter presets, or if information technology'll actually update game avails to improve how games look and feel.

The Xbox One X is scheduled to get on auction on Nov 7, for $499.

At present read: The all-time free games on the Xbox One