Xbox Scorpio will play UWP games and even help developers make them

By Jon Martindale Published November 8, 2016

Microsoft is looking to turn its upcoming Xbox Scorpio into a keystone in its Universal Windows Platform (UWP) system, having it play those games at up to 4K resolutions natively. This means no more console exclusives from Microsoft, as any game developed for the UWP platform will work on Windows 10 PCs, Scorpio, and the Xbox One without much difficulty.

Microsoft’s UWP system has been a major drive for a while now, with the idea being that it creates a single ecosystem that spans consoles, PCs, mobile and even the HoloLens augmented reality headsets. Scorpio will be a major component in that mix, as it will not only deliver monstrous power for console gaming, but also act as a developmental platform for games and experiences on other hardware, too.

Recommended Videos

This is because Scorpio is a clever piece of kit. As explained by Windows Central sources, Scorpio will be able to mimic an Xbox One at a hardware level, so developing games on a Scorpio will make it incredibly easy to test those titles on an Xbox One too. We’re told that this system has an internal code name: Project Helix.

While great news for developers, this also means that we may finally see an end of poor quality PC ports. By bringing the Scorpio up to the (purportedly) 6 teraflops level, it is just as capable as many decent gaming systems, so games developed for either should work fine on the other. Even a couple of years down the road when PC hardware has advanced beyond it again, the fact that Scorpio is built on the UWP should mean that upgrading the visuals and frame rates for PC gamers will be much easier than before as well.

Of course releasing games through the Windows Store hasn’t gone so well in every instance. Microsoft may need to get people over that problematic stigma before the UWP platform is completely embraced, but with the way Scorpio is being positioned, that might be easier than we’d have expected. It’s also possible that Microsoft doesn’t try and target the PC gaming space as much as it tries to augment the Xbox market with additional PC play and features.

If it tries to take the fight to Steam to push people to its store instead, it will need to step up its game.

Evergreen writer

Jon Martindale is a freelance evergreen writer and occasional section coordinator, covering how to guides, best-of lists, and…

Topics

Gaming

The impending Xbox 360 Store closure makes me wary of Game Pass’ future

I'm an avid Xbox Game Pass user, often trying almost every game that comes to the service and closely following the games coming to and leaving the service each month. Following some recent announcements by Microsoft, though, I've been thinking a lot more about something else about Xbox Game Pass and Microsoft's current digital-focused Xbox storefronts and ecosystem: what happens when it all goes away?
Microsoft announced last week that it will shut down the Xbox 360 Store in July 2024. After that day, it will be impossible to buy games, movies, or TV shows digitally on the Xbox 360 store; it's just like what happened with the 3DS and Wii U eShops earlier this year. That announcement also came not long after Microsoft revealed it would replace Xbox Live Gold with Xbox Game Pass Core in September. With these changes, Microsoft is stamping out any support or focus its giving to the Xbox 360's era as a platform. As someone who grew up mostly playing Xbox 360, seeing these things I grew up with go away is saddening. It's also making me think about the day this will eventually happen to Xbox Game Pass or the store on the Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.

Frankly, I'm not as concerned that Microsoft is going to do it anytime soon. Microsoft has given no indication that it plans on abandoning Xbox Game Pass. It's a really successful subscription service heavily integrated into all of its current platforms, there are titles confirmed to launch day one on it into 2024 and beyond, and Xbox initiatives like Play Anywhere and Smart Delivery ensure that at least some version of most Xbox games are available on other platforms. While I expect it to be the primary part of Microsoft's gaming strategy over the next decade, as someone who mainly played Xbox 360 growing up and is now seeing its storefront and subscription service go away, I'm now thinking about what the end of the Game Pass era will look like.
These recent actions have indicated that Microsoft will eventually be willing to do the same to the storefronts and subscription service we're currently using. Even after the backlash PlayStation, Nintendo, and Xbox all faced from these announcements, Sony is the only one that has backtracked its plans to close down older digital storefronts, at least temporarily. Xbox Game Pass is the current hotness for Microsoft, but what happens come the day it isn't? A lot more games are digital-only or tied to a subscription this generation, and those are the games most at risk of being lost if a digital storefront shuts down.
What happens to the Xbox console versions of games like Pentiment or Immortality on Xbox once Xbox Game Pass and the current iteration of the Xbox Store are shuttered? Yes, they can be played on PC, but the Xbox console version will be lost forever. And right now, it doesn't seem like Microsoft has any publicly shared plans to permanently preserve those experiences, nor has it done so for all of the Xbox 360 digital games going away. Game preservation is a significant problem facing the game industry, and Microsoft has just made a move showing that it's on the wrong side of that effort.

Gaming

Xbox Game Pass now runs on more PCs and Surface devices

Microsoft Edge gaming updates on screen in a room.

Microsoft is continuing its expansion of the Xbox Game Pass by releasing the ARMS64 version of the Xbox app for Windows. The company wrote in a blog post on Wednesday that the Xbox app has been updated to run natively on Windows PCs and other devices running Arms, including the Surface Pro X and the newly announced Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5.

The expansion of the Xbox app means that you can not only access Xbox Game Pass on recent models of the aforementioned devices, but that the app is also supported on older PCs that were originally not able to support cloud streaming in the first place, including PCs running software as far back as Windows 7. ARMS64 gets its name from the fact that the old PCs are capable of running on 64-bit Windows -- so can the Google Chromebooks.

Gaming

Xbox is inspiring Black youth to make games with Project Amplify

Project Amplify banner

Xbox launched Project Amplify, a new program that will help support Black youth who want to work in the gaming industry.

Project Amplify is a video series where 14 Black employees within Xbox seek to educate Black youth on the diversity of roles within the gaming industry, offering them advice and insights into their current roles as well as sharing stories about their journey into the gaming industry. The teaser trailer below compilates snippets from all 14 videos from each employee, including program manager Q Muhaimin, senior business development manager James Lewis, software engineer Nayomi Mitchell, and head of development for Halo Infinite Pierre Hintze.