Microsoft kicked off their E3 Conference by taking the wraps off of the Xbox One S, the newest iteration of the console featuring a slimmer design. The conference came to a close with a look into the future of the brand, with Phil Spencer taking the stage to confirm the existence and development of the next major addition, Project Scorpio.
The long-rumored machine is more than a simple refresh, as Spencer discussed in an interview with The Verge.
“The important thing for Scorpio is that it’s a dramatic step up for us in terms of hardware capability,” he continues, “Because as we saw 4K gaming and really high-end VR taking off in the PC space, we wanted to be able to bring that to console. Project Scorpio is actually an Xbox One that can natively run games in 4K and is built with the hardware capabilities to support the high-end VR that you see happening in the PC space today… when it ships it will be the most powerful console ever built.”
As previously reported, power is one of the primary concerns as the PlayStation 4 has remained dominant in this regard, and this has been evidenced with games running at both a higher frame rate and resolution more often than not on the PS4. While details on the exact hardware specifications weren’t shared at this point, Scorpio will feature “the most powerful graphics processor that’s been put into a console to date” for a no-compromise gaming experience.
With an 8-core CPU, 320GB/s of memory bandwidth, and a peak performance throughput of 6 teraflops, the next iteration of the Xbox One is over 4x more powerful than today’s console. As a result, it will be capable of “true” 4K gaming and rendering at 60 fps.
Phil Spencer stresses that Project Scorpio will exist within the same family as the Xbox One and Xbox One S, leaving no one behind. All three systems will be able to play the same games, utilize the same peripherals, and share the same experiences without forcing existing owners to abandon anything. Scorpio will complement the existing consoles, in much of the same way NEO will complement the PS4.
While unusual to announce a console this early, and with only a brief glimpse at what the new machine will look like, there’s still plenty of time between now and it’s Holiday 2017 release to learn more on the upcoming monster of a console – and we’ll bring you everything as it becomes available.
See more articles on E3 2016, Project Scorpio, and Xbox One.
Forza 7 on this beast will not be beaten.
XBox One Two?
This will sport the same CPU as the Xbox One else it will not be backward compatible which it is highlighted to be with Xbox One. So it’s exactly like the PS4 “Neo” or whatever it’s codenamed. Notice that they specifically stated a 6 TFlop GPU and 8 Core CPU, Jaguar is an 8 Core CPU, not sure how much more they can over clock it but they are definitely not changing that out. So guess what same bottleneck will remain since it’s not a new machine but an upgrade, hopefully they do not have more of that ESRAM nonsense.
My big issue with Scorpio is what is MS thinking revealing it immediately after saying they have the Slim Xbox coming soon? With the deflating sales of Xbox, an slim redesign could boost sales but a high output version is already being worked on would kill reason for buying the slim model. Also on the PC front, MS is cannibalizing their own sales. Low end PC gamers would have gotten an Xbox will avoid that now, with the Polaris GPU’s on the horizon, 5 Tflop affordable GPU’s are here, coupled with any intel CPU and yea Scorpio is redundant to low cost PC players(would be Xbox targets). Only folks left are die hards and early adopters, still though with the brand still Xbox One, they have a lot of public perception to change. Imagine how hard it will be for sales people to try to market Scorpio over Neo based on Tflops, they both will have identical systems and the Tflops could be the only variance but I bet gaming will be nigh impossible to actually tell the difference.
Not sure if MS are trying to grow the Xbox userbase or destroy their own console space.
I wish they would’ve set it for release late this year. I’m truly salivating. Also 6 teraflops, apparently that’s comparable to a GTX 1070 card, I’m blown away with that.
There is no way that a 6Tflop console will share the same online competitive gaming as the 1.something Tflop Xbox One. This is basically a brand new exclusive system for online gamers.
The advantageous difference in resolution and frame rate is enormous. In this sense they are strictly not compatible.
But personally I don’t care, new power is needed the past should be forgotten and not bothered with, no compromises. The Neo could do with this much power, I hope Sony does the same thing as Microsoft and brings out a 6Tflop machine. I own a PS4 I am happy for it to be redundant and sent packing for a super new PS console.
I can see 4k providing a very slim advantage but since games are usually locked at 60p fps max I don’t see how the ability to produce more fps than that can be an advantage.
2 years late to the VR segment…
VR launched this year.. About a month ago.
The beginning of the death of the 8th generation.
will this be enough for ps4k to be delayed?
Thanks Microsoft but I’ll stick with my PC, I don’t need another, I prefer consoles.
“With an 8-core CPU, 320GB/s of memory bandwidth, and a peak performance throughput of 6 teraflops, the next iteration of the Xbox One is over 4x more powerful than today’s console. As a result, it will be capable of “true” 4K gaming and rendering at 60 fps.”
But….but…..Sony just need to enable 4k gaming on the current PS4, it can totally do it! :p
Hope that’s a joke..
¯\_(ツ)_/¯