Should I Get an Xbox One X If I Don’t Have a 4K TV, or Find Inner Peace?

Should you get an Xbox One X if you don’t have a 4K TV? The short answer to this question is: probably no, but it’s a little more complicated than that.

Obviously, one big factor here aside from its $500 price tag and whether you have a 4K TV or not is if you already have the original Xbox One or its slimmer, slightly more advanced version, the Xbox One S.

Let’s run through the different scenarios:

Should I get an Xbox One X if I don’t have a 4K TV but have an Xbox One?

Answer: Yes, probably, if you have the extra cash.

If you have the original Xbox One, and you’re sick of how huge (13.1 x 10.8 x 3.1 inches) and loud it is, than the Xbox One X (11.8 x 9.5 x 2.4 inches) is an expensive upgrade that will clear up some room under your TV and make some games run slightly better. This is ultimately a negligible improvement for a device that is tucked away in your TV stand, but one of the nicest things about the Xbox One X is that it’s so compact and doesn’t need an external power supply. It’s a dense brick of electronic engineering, and I doubt that Microsoft will be able to make it any smaller until some major breakthroughs happen in the microprocessing industry.

It also appears that the Xbox One’s dashboard, which for my money is currently one of the most obtuse user interfaces on any mass consumer device (sad because I love Windows 10), and which has been sluggish and unresponsive since launch, runs better on an Xbox One X.

Should I get an Xbox One X if I don’t have a 4K TV but have an Xbox One S?

Answer: No.

If you already upgraded or only hopped on the current gen of systems with the Xbox One S (11.6 x 8.9 x 2.5 inches), the Xbox One X is about the same size. The menus are a little snappier, there are some minor graphical improvements, but if you don’t plan on buying a 4K TV in the next couple of years I really can’t justify this $500 purchase.

Should I get an Xbox One X if I don’t have a 4K TV and don’t have an Xbox One of any kind?

Answer: Yes.

If you’ve yet to buy an Xbox One of any kind and are in the market for one, the Xbox One X is probably the best option, despite the $200 difference. It’s a future-proofing purchase that gets you ready for when and if you do want to decide to get a 4K TV, which you’ll likely end up with even if you don’t plan on it because that’s what TV manufacturers are pushing. Think back to the transition to HD. You might not necessarily have been in the market for an HD TV, but that’s all the store had at a certain point (this is also how I ended up with a 3D TV, despite not using the 3D aspects of it even once). It’s the difference between paying $500 for a slight upgrade to something you already have to paying $500 for something completely new. I would give the same advice to someone who doesn’t have a PlayStation 4 of any kind and is looking to buy one: might as well get the PlayStation 4 Pro.

Should I get an Xbox One X if I don’t have a 4K TV and don’t have an Xbox One of any kind but have a PC or PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 4 Pro?

Answer: Only if you’re extremely horny for Halo.

If you have other means of playing the latest video games then you don’t need me to tell you this, but you’re probably having a good time. It’s really hard for the average person to tell the difference between a game running on a PlayStation 4 or Xbox One if they’re not looking down at the controller in their hands. If you have a killer gaming PC, you’re probably reading this only to amuse yourself with the laughably low specs of what Microsoft is calling “the world’s most powerful console.”

In this situation, the only reason to get an Xbox One X is to play Xbox One-exclusive games, and there aren’t that many this generation—especially now that Microsoft is committed to publishing all its games on the Windows 10 store as well. Gear of War 4, for example, is a Microsoft “exclusive,” but you can buy it for the PC, which in my opinion is the ideal place to play it if you can. Halo: The Master Chief Collection (great), and Halo 5: Guardians (also great), seem like they will remain true Xbox One exclusives forever. Other than that, there’s Sunset Overdrive—it’s like Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater with guns—which people don’t talk about anymore but is easily one of the best games you can only play on Xbox One.

Basically, you’d have to really want to play Halo very badly.

Should I get an Xbox One X if I don’t have a 4K TV and don’t have an Xbox One of any kind or any other device with which I choose to play video games?

Answer: Remain calm.

I don’t know how you ended up here. You’re probably lost. If this is your first time here, Motherboard is VICE’s science and technology website. We cover a lot of other topics besides video games like hacking and the environment. For example, this is a great story about people using recycled laptop batteries to power their homes. It’s a great website, check it out!

Should I get an Xbox One X if I don’t have a 4K TV but have an Xbox One S, a PC, a PlayStation 4 or PlayStation 4 Pro, and there’s a gaping hole where my heart used to be that I feel like no amount of electronics purchases and video game playing is able to fill?

Answer: ∞

First of all I want to say that it takes a lot of courage to admit this, and that the first step to solving a problem like this is admitting it exists. Congratulations.

The nature of my job is such that I own all of the devices above and others and some redundancies. In the past, I think it would be fair to say, I have even lusted after these devices. It’s embarrassing but it’s true. If I told younger me that I owned all these things, younger me would probably be very excited.

But I am 31 years old now and one of the few things I think I know is that things don’t make me happy. Don’t get me wrong. I need, want, and spend a lot of my time trying to acquire and maintain things. That is just the nature of the game at this point. I’m not above it. I got a new keyboard the other day and I like typing on it much more than I did on my last keyboard so that is one particular instance in which capitalism has worked out great.

But there’s also a lot of anxiety that comes with being an enthusiast video game player that manifests in the form of incredibly angry debates about the merits of 60 frames per second, high resolutions, and other graphical fidelity minutiae that is rarely analyzed from a reflexive perspective.

After buying a new graphics card for my PC, for example, I find myself constantly questioning my experience with a game. Am I dropping frames? Is everything rendering correctly? Am I getting what I paid for, and am I having a technically optimal experience with this piece of entertainment I’ve invested a lot of money in?

In reviewing my Xbox One X, I’ve spent a lot of time wondering whether my Xbox One X was properly running Middle-earth: Shadow of War, a new action game about enslaving and killing orcs. It just didn’t look as I expected it to look, despite being one of the few games that had specific enhancements that took advantage of the Xbox One X’s new power. At some hugely embarrassing point, I emailed a representative from the game’s publisher to ask how I could be sure that I downloaded the patch that took advantage of the Xbox One X. Did I download it? Do I have the right version? What, exactly, am I supposed to see? Higher framerates? Better textures?

A spokesperson for the company said it should be fine and I’m probably fine and not to worry about it. Which is true most of all because I obviously couldn’t even tell the difference between the “normal” version of the game and the Xbox One X-enhanced version of the game.

What I’m trying to say is that this is probably too much psychic energy that is swirling around a few frames, sharper textures, or high-dynamic range.

The Xbox One X, “THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL CONSOLE,” is not a console that one buys simply because one enjoys playing video games. It’s a console one buys because they are pursuing some platonic ideal of the video game playing experience that they’ll never be able to achieve, because even the world’s most powerful console is only the world’s most powerful console just for right now.

It’s important to ask, then: Why? Why is it not enough to just play a video game? Why do I want to play a video game on the “world’s most powerful console?”

I believe that this is because, in the past, when I was not satisfied with what I had, I reasonably thought the solution was in getting something else, something better. In recent years, I’ve been experimenting with reconsidering the things I already have before jumping to the conclusion that they aren’t enough. It doesn’t always work but I recommend that you do this as well before buying a $500 Xbox One X. Are you really unsatisfied with the console you already have? What’s really satisfying to you if you think about it deeply? Is it the latest gadget, or is it a fresh cup of coffee, spending time with your loved ones, or a regular and relieving bowel movement? Maybe the reason Middle-earth: Shadow of War doesn’t look quite right is that I don’t actually want to play it, I just convinced myself that I should because it’s new and expensive.

These are all things to consider before buying an Xbox One X, a fine device to be sure, and one you should buy for the reasons listed above, but not one that you should buy only because it’s the latest and best.