And the hole around Microsoft and their restrictive Xbox One console grows yet deeper.

It seems that the hands-on demos that Microsoft offered at their E3 booth weren't actually running on Xbox One consoles at all. Instead, they were playing on high-end gaming PCs sporting ultra-powerful Titan graphics cards, the likes of which are far more capable than the card in the actual Xbox One unit. This comes according to several eyewitness sources, one of which reported seeing a Windows 8 boot screen flash onscreen at several Xbox One booths, and another of which even went so far as to provide this picture of a Microsoft employee unloading the PC from beneath the demo station after E3 ended. 

The text in the image pretty much sums it all up. The PCs housed beneath the demo stations were approximately three times as capable as the actual Xbox One console, and as you can clearly see in the image to the right, there are PC towers beneath every single one of the demo stations. 

The station that employees are dismantling here seems to be the LocoCycle station; I highly doubt that Twisted Pixel's indie motorcycle racer would have benefitted too heavily from the massive power of a Titan graphics card. Something like Ryse or Killer Instinct, on the other hand, would have benefitted heavily in terms of performance and visuals from the added power of a PC.

We'll be reconsidering our Best Graphics award, which we first awarded to Ryse, shortly. But in the meantime, take hands-on previews of Microsoft titles from E3 with a grain of salt.