CES 2020: Xbox Series X rear ports get revealed by AMD [Updated]

Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox console did make an appearance at AMD’s CES press event earlier today, but the company apparently showed a bit too much. At the beginning of the chip maker’s press event, there was a much talked about video featuring multiple products using AMD processors, including the upcoming Xbox Series X from Microsoft.

The video briefly showed the rear ports of the new console, revealing 2 HDMI ports, 2 USB-C ports, an optical audio port, as well as an Ethernet port.

Rear shot of Xbox Series X shown during AMD CES presentation. Includes 2 HDMI ports, 2 USB-C ports, S/PDIF pic.twitter.com/8ZFb1xJjgi

— Wario64 (@Wario64) January 6, 2020

Xbox Series X will have a regular USB port in the front pic.twitter.com/8TvDDdfEFj

— Wario64 (@Wario64) January 6, 2020

We have since received a statement from AMD explaining that what we’ve seen in this video wasn’t coming straight from Microsoft. “The Xbox Series X imagery used during the AMD CES press conference was not sourced from Microsoft and does not accurately represent the design or features of the upcoming console. They were taken from TurboSquid.com.” AMD explained today.

With AMD and Microsoft being close partners for many years, this sort of communication misstep is a bit surprising. Anyway, it would be quite shocking if Microsoft gave up on the HDMI passthrough feature that has been included on all Xbox One consoles since 2013. Moreover, the transition to USB-C would make sense considering that Microsoft’s new Xbox Elite Series 2 controller already uses USB-C. However, the console still having a regular USB-A port in the front would be welcome to guarantee compatibility with existing accessories.

In case you missed it, Xbox head Phil Spencer also changed his Twitter profile picture today with an image of the Xbox Series X processor. We were hoping to learn more about this chip during AMD’s press event today at CES, but that didn’t happen. Anyway, the “8K” logo confirms what Microsoft previously said about the console supporting 8K graphics, though 4K will likely remain the norm for next-gen console games for years to come.

Hopefully, we will get full details about the Xbox Series X’s specs soon. Previous leaks mentioned a custom 8 core 16 thread Zen 2 CPU, a custom AMD Navi GPU delivering 12+ teraflops of power, 16GB of GDDR6 RAM, and a 1TB NVMe SSD providing 1+ GB/s of bandwidth.

Update 5PM PT: AMD told us in a statement that the Xbox Series X imagery shown during the company’s CES press event were not coming from Microsoft, and we’ve updated our story to reflect that.