These videos of Grand Theft Auto V loading in mere seconds on the Xbox Series X have stunned us into silence.
The clip itself is less than ten seconds long, would you believe it. Under the hoods, the two next-gen consoles are similar, but the Xbox Series X nips ahead of the PlayStation 5 in a number of key areas. Firstly, there's the custom eight-core Zen 2 AMD CPU, with an option for developers to choose clock speeds of 3.8 GHz with hyperthreading turned off or 3.66GHz with hyperthreading turned on. Hyperthreading is not when the hem of your shirt starts unravelling at light speed, it's actually how the CPU processes data from two sources.
One source is what's going on in the game right now and is actively processed by the CPU, whereas the other source is preparing itself to be processed by the CPU. It's like a kitchen, where one dish has already been sent out to the guest, while the other is being plated up. In this metaphor, the guest is Kirby. They're the only character I could think of with an insatiable appetite. It also gives me the excuse to use this gif in an article with lots of techy acronyms and numbers.
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Secondly, there's the SSD, which is a whopping one terabyte in size. It's identical to the internal storage, so the two are able to read each other like an old married couple. The speed of this technology is the kicker here. Current-gen games like Grand Theft Auto V will be small fry for the Xbox Series X. Still, that doesn't mean we're not impressed.
"It's crazy," said JetRamRaptor in the comments. "I had gotten so used to the whole 'go on my phone while a game loads' thing. Now, by the time I unlock my phone, most games are loaded." oof46 agreed, and summarised it succinctly: "RIP my smoke break between rounds on PUBG/CoD/Battlefield." It's utterly revolutionised the way we play. Gone are the opportunities to scroll Twitter and/or make a sandwich while the game remembers where it left me last. Gone is the time needed to read the helpful gameplay hint tucked into a corner of concept art while I load into a new environment.
We'll cope. Though Microsoft has been investigating a recent slew of reports that games might run smoother on the PS5 compared to the Xbox Series X, it turns out that the latter is able to run PS2 games, unlike the former. Odd, isn't it? It's all thanks to Developer Mode, which lets the user emulate Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Jak and Daxter, Ico, and more. The company probably didn't expect its competitor's games to be counted in its backwards-compatible features.
Topics: Xbox, News, Grand Theft Auto