REDMOND, Wash.—Ahead of Xbox One X‘s November 7 launch, Ars Technica was invited to hang out at the company’s Xbox campus and chat with one of the console’s leading managers. With this opportunity in mind, we grabbed a camera crew and asked as many questions of Kevin Gammill, the Xbox division’s “core platform group program manager,” as we could.
For the most part, we stuck with questions about the past, present, and future of the Xbox One X console, which the company is positioning as a current-gen “upgrade” option. Team Xbox wants players to feel comfortable that their games will work on any Xbox they buy from here on out, whether that’s the more budget-minded Xbox One S or the brand-new, $ 500 Xbox One X. The more expensive option has its merits, particularly 4K-friendly updates (which are significantly less than an equivalent PC) for those with such a TV. But we took the opportunity to ask questions about concerns we ran into during our tests.