Phil Spencer says they’re matching the Xbox One X
Modern video game consoles can get pretty darn noisy, especially when game developers try to squeeze all they can out of the machines. Is it normal for a PlayStation 4 Pro to sound like it’s ready for takeoff? I don’t know about normal, but it’s become a common enough phenomenon that people have latched onto the notion that the system sounds like a “jet engine.” It can be genuinely distracting.
As we near another console generation, you kinda have to wonder: with all of the technological advances and ambition the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 represent, how loud will these things get?
At least in the case of the next-gen Xbox, we have some reassuring clues.
Speaking to GameSpot, head of Xbox Phil Spencer said that the designers “went with one central fan,” and explained that “what this design does, with the size of the fan that we built around, is it lets us match how quiet the Xbox One X.” Continuing, he said, “There’s always this tension between design, acoustics, cooling, and the function of the console, and we were not going to compromise on function.”
We’ll hear what it sounds like in real-world conditions during the holiday 2020 season, but for Spencer’s part, he says that in his household, “If I don’t point it out, [Xbox Series X] just sits there and plays video games the way I want it to and I never hear it, just like how I don’t hear my [Xbox One] X.”
Xbox Series X Will Stay As Quiet As Xbox One X, Says Phil Spencer [GameSpot]
