Microsoft’s E3 2016 press conference was chock full of not just games, but hardware as well. The company bookended its showcase with two new consoles, opening with the compact Xbox One S, and closing with Project Scorpio, a brand new box that will be the powerful successor to the Xbox One, releasing holiday 2017.
While the actual design for Project Scorpio was not shown off, there were some impressive spec benchmarks, such as a six teraflop GPU that will enable games to reach 4K resolution at 60 frames per second. The console will also be powerful enough to support VR gaming, and Microsoft also announced that Fallout 4 VR will launch on the system.
Microsoft Xbox Division exec Phil Spencer promised Project Scorpio would be “the most powerful console ever made.” While this will mark a major step forward for the Xbox line of consoles, it isn’t a full-on replacement for the Xbox One. All contemporary Xbox consoles — the Xbox One, Xbox One S, and Project Scorpio — will coexist, and all software and accessories are promised to work on each (and many on Windows 10, as well).
In other words, Microsoft wants to do away with the concept of console “generations,” and instead allow your library of games to carry over between hardware iterations as newer machines get released. Furthermore, Microsoft is removing the barriers between PC and console, offering cross buy and cross play across the majority of upcoming games available on Xbox and Windows 10.
Hard details on specs, pricing, and concrete release date are unknown, but with a nebulous “Holiday 2017” release window, there’s still a lot of time between now and release in which we’re sure to learn more about this powerful new hardware.
