There still isn’t much that’s clear about Project Scarlett, Microsoft’s follow-up to the Xbox One, which was revealed for the first time at the E3 conference in Los Angeles on 9 June. But we do have some answers.
We know a collection of technical specs: the new console will include a custom CPU, based on the Zen 2 architecture created by AMD, a well as GDDR6 Ram, a fast new standard of internal memory, and even an SSD for internal storage, the first time a traditional console has moved from the cheaper spinning disc platters of the PS4 and Xbox One.
We know some of what that means for players. The console will push positively ludicrous numbers of pixels, enabling 8K resolution – that’s 7680 × 4320 pixels, and, despite the name, roughly four times the resolution of a 4K screen – at 120 frames per second. It also supports high-end graphics features such as ray-tracing for the first time, bringing ultra-realistic lighting effects to home consoles. More prosaically, the combination of the SSD, CPU and memory should slash loading times, promising an end to staring at slowly filling progress bars.
We also know a small bit about why Microsoft is doing this. “We’re trying to remove all the barriers from game developers to deliver on their creative vision,” Jason Ronald, the director of product marketing at Xbox, says shortly after the public briefing. “We’ve got a lot of feedback from developers: ‘Here’s my vision, and I need this much creative power to be able to do it.’ That really shaped the design of Project Scarlett.”
And we know, lastly, a release window: “Holiday 2020.” For at least another 18 months, the current generation remains current.
Perhaps that’s why Microsoft is so stubbornly sticking to those small fragments of information. What will Project Scarlett look like? We don’t know. How much will it cost? No answer. What about the further tech specs: how many cores in the new CPU, how much of that delicious GDDR6 Ram, how large will the SSD be? Don’t bother asking.
In fact, Microsoft won’t even be drawn on perhaps the most important question of all: is Scarlett really the next generation, or is it an update of the current generation? The only game confirmed to be coming to the Scarlett, Halo Infinite, is also being released on the Xbox One, and Mike Ybarra, Microsoft vice-president of Xbox, would not commit to whether or not there would be such a thing as Scarlett-exclusive games down the line.
Instead, he said, Microsoft’s goal was “to give gamers the choice, price points, and flexibility to play the games that they can”. Halo Infinite will be on Xbox One and on Scarlett, so “they’ve taken the creative choice to say, ‘We know how to scale that game so it looks best on those devices’… We want to listen to the developers and let them make the decision on what they think their assets need to run best, and empower them to make that choice.”
This is an odd dodge when it seems likely that the answer will be the same as it has been for every previous generation. Even if Scarlett launches with a plethora of games built both for Xbox One and the new machine, it will eventually see its own exclusives, as developers tire of trying to cram ever more expansive, and expensive, games into the dating hardware of the Xbox One. But Scarlett is only one half of Microsoft’s strategy for the future of video games: the other half, Project xCloud, the company’s nascent game-streaming system, which was also playable at E3, is all about liberating video games from black boxes under the TV, letting players stream any game to any screen and offloading the necessary processing power to the cloud. Perhaps, in that sense, there won’t be any such thing as a Project Scarlett exclusive in the future: it might just run the same games better than other options.
The new mantra, delivered repeatedly, is “The games you want, with the people you want, anywhere you want”. The console, Microsoft is saying, isn’t the point any more: sure, you can play Halo Infinite on the Scarlett, but if you want to play it on the older Xbox One, you can. And if you want to play it instead on Project xCloud, you can do that instead. The intention is clear: Microsoft wants everyone to play its games, whether they have a new Xbox, an old one, or even no Xbox at all. The company is finally ploughing real money into its PC gaming division, as well as enabling people to play console-quality games on their mobile phone through streaming.
Nonetheless, there is clear excitement about the possibilities that the power of Scarlett will bring to the table. Ybarra describes it as “the biggest generational leap, from an experience standpoint, that we’ve ever seen”.
For the time being, however, the message is that if you want the absolute best – if you’re the sort of person with an 8K screen already (current price: £2,800), and a desire for all your games to look nothing short of jaw-dropping – then Scarlett is for you. But, if you just want to play “any game, anywhere”, your old console will have legs for a good few years to come.
