Xbox Series X: 4 Ups & 4 Downs After 4 Months

3. Insane Upgrades - Essentially Free Remasters - For 20 Years' Worth Of Games

So you're getting a library of games for a monthly fee. Cool. That's been the case since Game Pass launched.

Where Microsoft went one better - and where it really gets pretty magical in spots, to be honest - is how much work the Series X does under the hood, to improve any game you play on it.

Go back to everything from Oblivion to Brutal Legend, Brothers in Arms to Dead to Rights and you'll see everything boosted to crisp 4K resolution, with HDR enhancing the lighting and contrast of visuals themselves. The vast majority of titles all but eliminate load times and automatically boost frame rates too, with some games natively landing on 60 or 120fps, and developers returning to patch specific titles first-hand.

It sounds like quality of life upgrades, and they are, but these are celebratory tweaks to established libraries that make them feel entirely valid in the new generation. Where so many companies charged full price for resolution and frame rate-boosted remasters across the 8th generation, Microsoft are now doing it all at the system level, and it makes everything look incredible.