Yesterday saw the long-awaited worldwide release of the Xbox One X. As part of his efforts to promote "the world's most powerful console," executive VP of gaming at Microsoft and the head of Xbox brand, Phil Spencer, has been speaking about the machine to various media outlets.
During his visit to CNBC, Spencer was asked about the Xbox One X's target customer. Having previously admitted it isn't for everybody, he said: "This is for the discerning connoisseur of gaming [that] has a 4K television, [who] wants to see the absolute best visuals. This box is definitely targeted toward the customer that buys the most and plays the most."
Spencer added that the cheaper Xbox One S was the more mainstream console, aimed at the likes of new gamers and families, which is why Microsoft expects it to be the better seller. Ultimately, it's about giving Xbox fans the choice of buying a console for around $250, or spending $500 on a top-tier, 4K machine.
Initial reviews of the Xbox One X have been mostly positive, though several reviewers noted caveats such as limited HDR support in some games. Microsoft recently said demand for the console was "super high," but many Amazon customers reportedly failed to receive their pre-orders yesterday.
Last week, it was revealed that the Xbox One X natively supports 1440p monitors, rather than upscaling the image from 1080p in the same way as the PlayStation 4 Pro.
In other Xbox news, Spencer recently gave an interview to Bloomberg in which he said Microsoft would probably debut a game streaming service that doesn't require a console for some types of content in the next three years.
"Now, players are playing the games across every device and we're connecting those players across all of those devices," Spencer said. "Obviously for us, the console is an important part there... but connecting to gamers wherever they are is the vision of Microsoft around what we're doing in gaming."