Unsurprisingly, Microsoft has officially announced the next-gen Xbox, currently known as Project Scarlett, at E3 2019, with a trailer supposed to whet our appetites and make us forget about the upcoming Sony PS5, while still being wary of the details. I don't know why I watch Microsoft events every year (well, that's my job), but I always start with a bit of optimism, this year will finally show me. something that will make me want to go for it. and buy an Xbox. Once again, it failed. The details revealed by Microsoft about the Scarlett project were ridiculously thin, and it seemed like the latter just wanted to prove that the next Xbox could be compared to the PS5. So we have the promise of a custom AMD SoC for Project Scarlett (like the PS5), the use of an SSD to speed up load times (like the PS5), and lots of graphics memory (like the . .. you get the picture). If the two consoles end up looking similar, customers will have to choose the platform that offers the best games. In this fight, Microsoft has no chance against Sony, despite the fact that it accumulates a large number of game developers, but still has the upper hand on exclusives. Of course, all the games published by Microsoft will also be applied to the PC, which is great for PC gamers like me, because it means again that I won't need to play on an Xbox. The fact that Microsoft bought Double Fine, one of my favorite game developers, would have been very upsetting if they had been designed to create games exclusively for Xbox. As long as their games keep showing up on PC though, I'll be happy.
An image of a Scarlett nude project. Specsy! (Image credit: Microsoft)
Lack of resource for specifications
I've already explained why Microsoft's decision to make all their games available on PC and Xbox means I'll never have to buy an Xbox in the past. But if Microsoft had a really innovative console that really pushed the limits of hardware, I might be interested. It's still in its infancy, and later on Microsoft might reveal a hitherto unknown set of innovations for Project Scarlett, but for now, judging by what little we know, it's not going to scare a lot of people off. PC gamers. It's great that console manufacturers have finally embraced SSDs; of course, that probably means these consoles won't be cheap. But PC gamers have been enjoying SSDs for millions of years (slight exaggeration). AMD's custom SoC is more interesting and the fact that it uses their future Zen 2 and 7nm Navi architectures would be exciting, but Project Scarlett is expected to come out in 2020, and by then, these architectures should have been the state. wild. for a moment. Although Microsoft was particularly sensitive to the specifics of Project Scarlet's hardware (and continued to avoid revealing anything when we spoke with Liz Hamren, vice president of game engineering at Microsoft after the series launched), a few hints have allowed us to wait. In the reveal trailer, Microsoft says that "from a pure processing standpoint (Project Scarlett) it's four times more powerful than Xbox One X." This may sound incredible, but I couldn't help but notice Microsoft's judicious use of language; It doesn't mean that Project Scarlett will be four times more powerful than Xbox One X as a whole, just that its processor will be four times more powerful. Total console output could be less than a 4x improvement over the Xbox One X. Since the Xbox One X's processor was probably its weakest link, it's based on AMD's old Jaguar architecture, this sudden jump in power is also impressive.
One of the less impressive aspects of the Xbox One X was its processor (Image credit: Microsoft) During the reveal, Microsoft suggested that Project Scarlett be capable of 120FPS and 8K resolution. Once again, he was very careful with the phrases. So while this may look promising in 8K at 120 frames per second, it may be rare, if possible. We won't be seeing games that are graphically demanding at 8K and 120FPS for a long time, and that would be overkill for most people, especially console gamers playing 1080p 60Hz TVs. If (and this is a big one), there are 8K, 120FPS games, they'll probably be very graphics-bare - the stuff simply couldn't cope with the most demanding graphics at this level.
You haven't seen any sequence in the game yet that's appropriate for Halo Infinite. What does Microsoft have to hide? (Image credit: Microsoft)