June 19, 2016 by Paul Curtin
Although both Sony and Nintendo have confirmed new consoles in development, neither of the two were present or talked about at this year’s E3. Surprisingly, it was actually Microsoft who ended their E3 2016 media briefing with a huge new console announcement that shocked us all.
While there were leaks of a slim white version of the Xbox One that turned out to be true, Microsoft brilliantly started their media briefing off with that Xbox One S confirmation and waited until the very end to hit gamers with their bigger new console news: Project Scorpio is official, and the team at Microsoft is claiming that it will be the most powerful console on the market when it arrives in stores sometime in late 2017.
Microsoft is making some bold claims about Scorpio, such as its ability to handle 4K gaming at 60hz and even going as far as labeling the CPU with “4K” in the promo shots… a feat that current-gen consoles come nowhere close to being able to achieve and even those with $1,000+ custom-built gaming rigs equipped with brand new $800+ GTX 1080s know PCs cannot deliver at the moment.
Considering that Scorpio is said to have almost six times the power of the Xbox One with “six teraflops of GPU power,” that still only puts it in the same range as nVidia’s GTX 1070, and there are still a ton of other factors Microsoft has yet to give details on that need to be considered when trying to gauge exactly what this new console will be capable of producing in terms of resolution and framerate.
With few details on the Xbox – Project Scorpio console at the moment, it’s hard to believe what Microsoft is claiming. Project Scorpio’s announcement has certainly made things interesting and hopefully has raised the bar for both Sony and Nintendo, who have yet to announce what exactly their next-gen consoles will be capable of delivering. But even as a hopeful gamer, Microsoft’s claims seem more like hype that they won’t be able to live up to next year. Hopefully, we’re wrong, but without a massive price tag for the Scorpio, it just doesn’t seem realistic at the moment or even the near future.
