Sony might have its 4K-ready PS4 Pro out right now, but Microsoft has been enjoying success with the Xbox One S thanks to its 4K Blu-ray player (what's going on, Sony?) - and now we're hearing about Microsoft's confidence in its new "monster" Project Scorpio console due in 2017.
Xbox boss Phil Spencer was fielding questions on Twitter as always, where he teased: "Looking forward to E3. We build our Xbox plans for Xbox customers, not in response to others. I think 2017 will be a good year". Then @MasyerGaming asked Spencer "are you guys keeping the promise of 6 teraflop GPU on scorpio rumors are running its been dropped to 5 tell me its not true."
Spencer replied: "Nothing has changed since our announce," so we're safe - Project Scorpio still has 6 TFLOPs of GPU performance, and Microsoft asserts it will enable native 4K console gaming, which the PS4 Pro has trouble sustaining.
In fact, Microsoft even went so far as to say that Project Scorpio will basically deliver a new era of 4K console gaming that we haven't seen yet--even with Sony's PS4 Pro.
"Here we are, three years into the generation, and we also have gamers saying, 'Hey, I want the most power, I want the best experience possible,' and that's what Project Scorpio is all about," Microsoft's Senior Global Product Marketing Director Aaron Greenberg told IGN in a recent interview.
"[Project Scorpio] will be the most powerful console ever made. It will deliver 4K gaming to people in the living room on their TVs that they have not experienced before," Greenberg affirmed.
"So today, a lot of people who are spending thousands of dollars on high-end PCs are able to experience 4K gaming, sure, but to be able to bring that at scale to the living room, to the console market, is what Scorpio is all about."
But at the same time, Microsoft exec Albert Penello admitted that both Sony and MS have to "fudge the details a bit" because 4K HDR gaming is very hard to market--it's something you have to see to believe.
Project Scorpio will release in Holiday 2017, and we speculate the console will utilize a combination of AMD's new next-gen Zen CPU and Vega GPU hardware to provide native 4K high-performance gaming.
Check below for a list of everything we know about Project Scorpio so far.
Project Scorpio confirmed specs:
- 6 TFLOPs of performance
- 320GB per second memory bandwith
- 8CPU Cores
Everything we know so far about Project Scorpio:
- Xbox Scorpio confirmed, rocks 6TFLOPs, 4K gaming, VR, coming in 2017
- Project Scorpio's custom GPU could sit between Polaris and Vega
- Xbox Scorpio could be powered by 14 nm Polaris + Zen SoC for 4K gaming
- The next-gen Xbox Scorpio will be capable of 90FPS in VR
- Project Scorpio won't run all current Xbox One games at 1080p 60FPS
- Next-gen Xbox Scorpio to support native 4K gaming?
- New 4K Xbox to support Oculus Rift VR headset
- New Xbox will be '5 times more powerful' than PS4 Neo, rocks 10 TFLOPs
- Xbox and Windows are merging under Microsoft's Project Helix strategy
- Next-gen 4K-ready Xbox coming in 2017, could sport external GPU