I apologize if this is lengthy, but I was surprised by the level of dismissal of the One X from Shipwreck (and general agreement from Wombat). I agree that Microsoft needs to do a better job of marketing this console in the long run, but I believe their initial production of Scorpio Editions will sell out, with good reason.
First, to clarify, only the Scorpio Edition is available for preorder at this time, and the entire initial allotment of Xbox One X's are Scorpio Editions (this was clarified by Xbox-employee accounts on twitter). As of the time of this post, Best Buy, Amazon, the Microsoft Store, and Walmart have all sold out of their preorders. It is still available from Gamestop and Target.
For those without a 4k TV, the value proposition of an Xbox One X is far less attractive relative to a mid-high tier gaming PC. There is, of course, some percentage of consumers that are not interested in using a PC to game in their living rooms / home theaters but may still be interested in higher performance / framerates / resolution in games. You've all seemed to acknowledge this, but haven't acknowledged why someone WOULD want to buy an X if they do have a 4k (+HDR) TV.
For those with a 4k TV (this is more people than you might expect. With Amazon's $400 4K TVs and TCL's $600 HDR capable TVs being recently launched, it is hard to justify buying a non 4K/HDR TV in the $400-800 50-60" TV market), the X seems like a pretty good value. I say this for several reasons:
1) UHD Bluray drive.
While it isn't the best UHD drive out there, it does the job and allows for UHD Bluray playback. Standalone UHD Bluray drives still run around $100-200 (or more) for basic models. Shipwreck should understand this, given that he is now buying UHD Blurays but without a means to play them back. When he inevitably upgrades to a 4k display, he'll want a way to play his premium media. Yes, the Xbox One S does have a UHD Bluray player, so this is a debatable point for those that already own an S.
2) HDR gaming.
Many PC games still do not have HDR support, whereas their console counterparts do. Two notable examples come to mind: Forza Horizon 3 & The Witness, but there are many other examples. While parity may one day exist between PC/Consoles, it does not currently, and there are only a handful of PC monitors that support HDR. Again, this feature (HDR) does exist on the S, but not with native 4k support.
3) *Stable* 4K (or even 1080p) gaming.
Yes it is possible with a PC, but in my experience it is hard to pinpoint the best settings for a given game to achieve a stable 60 (or even 30) FPS, even with a higher end GPU. An upgrade to a GTX 1080 (considered to be a relatively 4k capable graphics card) is at least a $500 purchase, and that won't even guarantee stable performance if CPU or RAM are bottlenecks.
Having games optimized for 4k, whether through checkerboarding or native 1:1 4k, running at a stable 30 or 60 fps is an attractive proposition. Furthermore, 1080p gaming on current-gen consoles has been disappointing to say the least. This console generation was incredibly marginal performance-wise. With game devs trying to push better visuals and losing stable framerate in the process, the original XBO and PS4 were disappointing. While only 100+ games will be initially be optimized for 4k gameplay (or supersampled 1080p) on the X, every game will will run better, allowing for a more consistent experience, with less framerate drops. Games with dynamic resolution will run at higher resolutions more consistently (think PS4 Pro's boost mode). The PS4 pro has closed this performance gap for the Sony ecosystem and the X stands to do so for the MSFT ecosystem.
