Xbox at E3 2019: Xbox Project Scarlett Console Launching Holiday 2020
by Brett Howse on June 9, 2019 5:50 PM EST
Today at E3 Phil Spencer of Microsoft announced Project Scarlett, which is their next generation console and brings some massive performance increases over even the already powerful Xbox One X.
Once again partnering with AMD, Xbox Project Scarlett is, according to Microsoft, the biggest single generation leap in performance they’ve ever delivered, and it starts with its SoC. AMD is leveraging Zen 2 CPUs cores coupled with a Navi-based GPU. And while we don’t have the expected performance figures yet, these components are a big step up over the current generation.
Xbox One X is still based on Jaguar CPUs, which are a limiting factor, and adding Zen 2 is going to be an incredible step up in CPU performance, which has been the limiting factor of the Xbox One X. Coupling that with a Navi based GPU with hardware based Ray Tracing should provide a level of fidelity far above even the Xbox One X. Microsoft’s target for Project Scarlett was announced as 120 FPS (which we assume is at 4K) but also variable refresh rate, and support for up to 8K on the hardware. Microsoft states this console will be four times more powerful than the Xbox One X.
Microsoft is also going to be offering an internal SSD for the first time ever, and they discussed at length how they are going to leverage it to reduce the load times in games, which are a major block to immersion at the moment especially on consoles. Microsoft will be using some of the SSD as a RAM cache as well.
Microsoft also stated that they will continue to their tradition of moving gamers and the games they own onwards with this new launch, so existing Xbox One games and the back-catalog of backwards compatibility games will continue to be playable on the new console as well.
Project Scarlett will be launching in Holiday 2020 along with a new version of Halo to commemorate the launch. Not all details are available yet but we’ll keep you up to date when we hear more.
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mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link
Yes, it must be CPU. And Zen2-type cores, that is.mode_13h - Tuesday, June 11, 2019 - link
> Microsoft states this console will be four times more powerful than the Xbox One X.Um, four times *as* powerful? Probably what they meant.
...maybe, if you're talking about just the CPU. It's hard for me to see how they could get such a big jump in GPU performance, without the entire console costing at least 2x as much.
qwertymac93 - Thursday, June 13, 2019 - link
Is it really necessary to have a video I didn't click on autoplay as soon as the page loads? why waste my bandwidth on a video ad I didn't click on and isn't even really relevant? This is an xbox article and I'm getting a video on how to choose the right SSD. I have five SSDs already, convinced by real articles written by Anand the man himself, I don't need a video to tell me SSDs are faster than hard drives, and I certainly don't need ANOTHER video to autoload right after and start playing too. If I leave this page open in the background how many videos are you guys gonna load? 50 videos in a loop and eat up gigs of bandwidth? WTH!Vitor - Sunday, June 16, 2019 - link
They are aiming for 4k/60fps on all games. I just hope they also offer 1080p/120fps option.mode_13h - Friday, June 21, 2019 - link
Those "helpful" videos are just a way to force-feed you youtube ads.sushukka - Monday, June 24, 2019 - link
Many people referring to the manufacturing costs of fast chips, memory etc, but no one seems to mention how the usual practice is to sell these pizza boxes at a loss for first years after the launch. PS3 is probably the worst case scenario where the hardware was generating earnings only at the end of its lifecycle. PS3 was initially priced at $600 and actual manufacturing costs were around $840.Memory, SSD, case, BD-drive, mobo costs some bucks but are not that significant nowadays. With 16GB RAM, they can probably squeeze all these under $200. If we assume that the actual manufacturing expenses at the launch are something around $600-$700 there would be $400-500 for CPU/GPU combo. Ryzen 3700X MSRP $329. With Sony/MS the actual cost would more likely be something around $100-200 or less (PS3 Cell chip was ~$89) leaving $300-400 for the GPU. RTX2080 level of graphics performance could then very well be reality on next gen consoles thanks to AMD being back on its feet and feeding the competition.