The news I’m sure many people were waiting for finally came near the end of Microsoft’s E3 briefing. Phil Spencer came out to talk about what’s next for Xbox from a technical standpoint. He started off announcing Project xCloud. A new cloud-streaming service that will allow players to access and play their Xbox games anywhere via streaming. This comes out in October.
For the players who like to keep it simple and traditional (like myself), this next announcement is a big one. The upcoming console in the esteemed Xbox lineage is ‘Project Scarlett’ (just a code name for now). While previous consoles were all about power, Phil Spencer states that ‘Project Scarlett’ will be about power AND performance. Scarlett is putting emphasis on the ability to play games on-disc, download, and streaming.
‘Project Scarlett’ will be 4x more powerful than the current powerhouse, the Xbox One X. Spencer promises we’ll get “framerates and resolutions we’ve never seen before,” and it will have 8K compatibility and 120fps. The console’s performance will be 40x more powerful, thanks to the built-in solid-state drive. This means no loading times and a significant graphics upgrade.
When the Xbox ‘Project Scarlett’ arrives holiday 2020, it won’t be alone. Halo, the game that started it all, is back with Halo: Infinite and will be a launch title for the next-gen console. We got a nice cinematic trailer for Halo: Infinite (see below) that shows a lonely marine stranded in the depths of space when all of sudden Master Chief appears outside his cockpit. The marine brings Chief in, resuscitates him, and we see that iconic shield bar appears at the top of the screen…Master Chief is back.
As an Xbox fanboy since the beginning, I can’t wait to get my hands on the new console. I also can’t wait to get a proper name (and not just a code name) for it since Xbox ‘Project Scarlett’ is quite the mouthful. What do you think?
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