At their E3 2016 press conference, Microsoft announced their intention to move the video game console business “beyond generations” by announcing not one, but two new Xbox models. At the beginning of their presentation, they unveiled the slimmed-down, economical Xbox One S, but they had an even bigger bomb in store for the end of the show.
Microsoft has officially confirmed the much-rumored Project Scorpio, which the company is promising is the most powerful home console ever made. The new console will boast 8 CPU cores, 6 teraflops of processing power and 128 megabytes of memory bandwidth. That’s a lot of fancy numbers, but in practice, all this extra power will be used to deliver 4K gaming and “high fidelity VR” (Microsoft also subtly confirmed rumors they’re teaming with Oculus for VR).
So, is Project Scorpio the next full generation of Xbox? Not quite. Again, Microsoft wants to go beyond generations, but aside from that marketing slogan, Project Scorpio won’t have any exclusive games. According to Microsoft, future Xbox games will be playable on the Xbox One S, Project Scorpion, and yes, the boring old original Xbox One.
Project Scorpio will be available holiday season of 2017, so start saving your pennies now, folks.