E3 2016 - Microsoft announced their next-gen Xbox Scorpio console, which is capable of both 4K and VR gaming, and due out next year. But what powers Microsoft's new Xbox Scorpio? AMD tweeted earlier today that they are powering it, which is what we knew - but they tweeted some more details. We think it'll be powered by the new 14nm-based Zen APU with some Polaris GPU cores, which will make it quite the powerful console from Microsoft, which is great to see.
The official AMD Twitter account tweeted: "We're proud that @Microsoft has expanded their @Xbox One family with 2 new consoles featuring AMD's semi-custom SoCs". So now we have total 100% clarification that AMD has their technology inside of the Xbox once again, as the company powered the recent Xbox One console with its technology. With the Xbox Scorpio capable of 4K/VR gaming, I'd dare say this is a semi-custom design based on the Polaris architecture, on the 14nm FinFET process.
I personally asked AMD if they were going to have a console-based chip ready for next-gen consoles when they briefed the media on Polaris last year in Sonoma, but they were very quiet about the entire thing obviously. We've reached out to AMD for more clarification on the chip, as they've tweeted "SoC" which is a system-on-chip, not an APU which is a CPU with GPU cores. Very different things, and very different power envelopes, cooling, and more. We'll update this post when we know more.