Microsoft has completely changed the conventional games console launch cycle with the announcement of its Xbox Scorpio Project at the E3 event. The new console comprises potent hardware coupled with seamless software, marking a new beginning in the console market.
However, gamers should not confuse the Xbox Scorpio with the Xbox One S, which is basically a minor improvement scheduled for launch later in 2016. The Xbox Scorpio, on the other hand, is due in the holiday season of 2017.
As far as the performance of Xbox Scorpio is concerned, the Redmond tech titan expects to set new standards for consoles. Microsoft claimed in the announcement video that the upcoming console will be capable of delivering four times the graphical power compared to the existing Xbox One. This would enable the upcoming console to run games at much higher resolution with superior frame-rates, Digital Trends reported.
Project Scorpio will accommodate an 8-core yet-to-be released AMD CPU and come with a graphics card with 6TFLOPs power. TFLOPS or teraflop denoted trillion floating point operations per second and is dependent of the GPU of the device. In addition, the console will come with 320GB/s of memory bandwidth.
Project Scorpio is designed for VR and the announcement video clearly mentions about the "Fallout 4" VR. In addition, the console will possess the aptitude to play games in 4K resolutions at 60Hz. The Scorpio will feel like a new generation in terms of graphical fidelity, Microsoft Xbox headPhil Spencer told The Verge in an interview.
Meanwhile, Microsoft asserted the Xbox Project Scorpio will not change Xbox as a platform. The announcement video said that the company only enhances the capabilities of the Xbox One plus other devices in the Xbox family without compelling gamers to dump all the games as well as community they are devoted to.
According to the Redmond tech giant, all accessories and games will continue to work on Scorpio. Nevertheless, the company did not specify whether or not the entire new games launched come with both an Xbox One version as well as a Scorpio version.
As far as the pricing of the Xbox Project Scorpio is concerned, the company has not announced anything so far. Since the launch of the console is still very far away, it is difficult to predict anything regarding its price tag. However, considering the specifications of the device and presuming that the company will market the console with narrow profit margins, it may be priced around $600.
Watch the video on Xbox Project Scorpio being revealed at the Microsoft E3 event below: