Rumors of an updated Xbox console have been floating around for some time now, and Microsoft just confirmed them today during their E3 2016 press conference. Project Scorpio is real, and it's coming during the holiday season of next year, and boy is it powerful.
Project Scorpio brings a plethora of hardware updates when compared to the Xbox One. Scorpio includes 8 CPU cores, 320 GBPS of memory, and 6 terraflops of GPU. On top of that, Scorpio will support 4K gaming and 4K video. Microsoft also mentioned that the Scorpio will feature fully uncompressed pixel rendering, allowing for a crystal clear resolution. All of these upgrades combined mean that Project Scorpio will be 4 times more powerful than the Xbox One. To go even further, Scorpio will also support virtual reality, but Microsoft has not yet stated whether they will be partnering with any VR companies yet. When all is said and done, Project Scorpio will be the most powerful console to date when it ships next year.
It is important to note that Project Scorpio isn't the start of a brand new console generation. It is instead a hardware update for the current generation. Games designed for Xbox One will run on the Scorpio, as well as the Xbox Slim. Hardware will work the same across all three systems as well, such as headsets and controllers. Scorpio will just be able to run the same games better, and those same games will simply look prettier on the Scorpio. All three of these consoles will be able to interact with one another no problem. For example, there will be no difference between two people playing online co-op both using the Xbox One, and two people playing co-op where one player is on an Xbox One, and the other is playing on Scorpio. The three consoles will be connected and are basically a part of the same console generation, although Microsoft claims that this is the first step in gaming where consoles can go beyond generations and can instead work more like a platform like PCs.
Xbox may have given us the specs for the upcoming system, but there is still much we don't know. The most pressing question would have to be the cost of Scorpio. On top of that, we still don't have an exact release date for the console, and although we know it will support VR in some way, we don't know the specifics on that.
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