Microsoft announced not one, but two new Xbox consoles during its E3 event on Monday. The Xbox One S is essentially a sleek, incremental upgrade over the standard Xbox One. But the big deal here is the Microsoft Project Scorpio, which Xbox head Phil Spencer revealed will arrive by the 2017 holiday season.
"Today marks the beginning of a future of gaming beyond generations," stated Spencer. "A future full of choice, a future where we can all play without boundaries."
"Today marks the beginning of a future [...] where we can all play without boundaries" — @XboxP3 #XboxE3 pic.twitter.com/EvU1Wvlubt
— Xbox (@Xbox) June 13, 2016
Like Sony's rumored PlayStation 4.5 NEO, the new Project Scorpio by Xbox is designed specifically for a future in VR gaming. Sure, the new Xbox One S' 4K Ultra HD video support is impressive, but it's nothing compared to what the Scorpio will promise – a high-end GPU that delivers six teraflops of processing power, an 8-core CPU and 320 GB/s of memory bandwidth, all to run 1080p at 60 fps, 4K gaming and VR support.
"The important thing for Scorpio is that it's a dramatic step up for us in terms of hardware capability," said Xbox chief Phil Spencer in an interview with The Verge. "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."
Obviously, information is limited at this point and there are plenty of details that Microsoft left out during the E3 event. Early speculation suggested Oculus may collaborate with Microsoft for a dedicated Xbox headset. That said, the latest announcements suggesting high-end VR support could indicate the bumped processing power within Project Scorpio is capable of supporting the Oculus Rift and perhaps the HTC Vive as well. If this turns out to be the case, then Microsoft's Project Scorpio may potentially better the PlayStation 4.5 NEO and its more entry-level PS VR.
Stay tuned as we expect to learn more about the Microsoft Project Scorpio in the months ahead!
