The Xbox’s Project Scorpio is still a year away, but Microsoft is already making some pretty bold claims about the console’s computing power. Unlike the majority of games running on Sony’s PlayStation 4 Pro, which upscale to 4K instead of delivering it natively, it appears that Microsoft’s upgraded system won’t have to make such a concession.
Speaking to USA Today, Microsoft Studios Publishing general manager Shannon Loftis made a surprisingly cut-and-dried statement about the games launching at the same time as the Xbox Scorpio next year.
“Any games we’re making that we’re launching in the Scorpio time frame, we’re making sure they can natively render at 4K,” Loftis said.
Loftis’ quote includes the phrase “games we’re making,” suggesting that native 4K claim may be limited to first or second-party Xbox One games, and it’s unclear just which games are going to launch alongside the system. Halo Wars 2, Scalebound, and Sea of Thieves are all scheduled to release several months before the new system, leaving Crackdown 3 as a possible candidate. The game makes use of cloud computing for its destruction system in multiplayer, but the extra horsepower could certainly do no harm.
Microsoft won’t be looking into 2017 for a couple more months, however. Forza Horizon 3 releases in just over a week, and the long-awaited Gears of War 4 follows in early October.
While the technical specifications released for the Xbox Scorpio are fairly limited right now, the information Microsoft has provided suggests it’s more capable of rendering in 4K than the PlayStation 4 Pro. Its GPU boasts 6 teraflops of performance compared to a little more than 4 on Sony’s system (and 1.3 on the original Xbox One). Like the current lineup of PlayStation 4 systems and the Xbox One S, it will also support HDR.
