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Pre-order Xbox One X in a limited Project Scorpio Edition
The rumors were true. Microsoft is marking the launch of the Xbox One X by starting pre-orders for a limited Project Scorpio Edition for the console. It'll cost the same $499/£450 as the standard model, but this is more than a rehash of the Day One system that commemorated the Xbox One launch in 2013. On top of Project Scorpio lettering on the console and controller, the machine gets a "sophisticated and dynamic" pattern and an exclusive vertical stand to flaunt your early adopter status. Even the packaging has a twist -- it harkens back to the 2001-era Xbox.
Microsoft could release an Xbox One X ‘Project Scorpio’ edition
Microsoft used "Project Scorpio" as the code name for the Xbox One X, its powerful new gaming console set to release on November 7th. According to a couple of leaks on German website Xbox Dynasty, the company will celebrate the launch with a new day one-style model in which the codename will show up on the console itself. The images show a clear "Project Scorpio" embedded vertically on the Xbox controller, along with a stippled pattern for the rectangular console itself. The specs also show a 1TB capacity, which should make space-hungry gamers happy.
Watch Microsoft's Xbox One X reveal in 14 minutes
After months of teasing it's fancy new console, Microsoft officially revealed Project Scorpio... er, the Xbox One X, here at E3 2017. The company packed a nearly two-hour event with specs, availability info and a ton of games. If you missed any the big announcements, don't fret. We trimmed down all of the news to a 14-minute clip so you can catch up on your coffee/tea break. Follow all the latest news from E3 2017 here!
'Forza Motorsport 7' makes the jump to 4K on Xbox One X
It's official: Forza Motorsport is back. Microsoft unveiled the latest iteration of its flagship racing series at E3 2017, and as you'd expect, it's upgraded for the current era with nods to Windows 10, eSports and Project Scorpio -- excuse us, make that the Xbox One X. Turn 10 boss Dan Greenawalt showed off Forza Motorsport 7 running at 4K and 60 frames per second, while also adding dynamic weather effects. Adding feature players have been asking for repeatedly throughout the last few years, rain (but not snow?) can impact your races, with puddles forming on the track dynamically. The unveiling also served as a premiere for an all-new car, the 2018 Porsche 911 GT2 RS. We'll be able to try that car out virtually this week, and so will you -- along with 700 others -- when the game arrives on October 3rd. Interestingly, the YouTube description lists the release date on Xbox One X as "holiday," so it's possible the upgraded version may arrive later. Update: The press release says the game is coming to the Xbox family of devices (plus Windows 10 PCs) on October 3rd, and that Ultimate Edition buyers will have early access starting September 29th.
Microsoft unveils the $499 Xbox One X, the most powerful console ever
Say hello to the Xbox One X, the next member of Microsoft's Xbox One family. Previously known as "Project Scorpio," it was first teased at last year's E3, and we caught a glimpse at its powerful hardware a few months ago. At E3 today, Microsoft revealed that the Xbox One X will land on November 7th for $499/£449. The big takeaway: It's significantly more powerful than the PlayStation 4 Pro, so much so that it can run some games at 4K/60 frames per second.
We're live from Microsoft's E3 2017 Xbox One X event!
Microsoft will answer three important questions today: How much Project Scorpio, its high-powered Xbox One, will cost; what the console's name will be; and when we can actually buy it. Lucky for you, you can follow along with your favorite members of the Engadget gaming crew as we deliver the blow-by-blow from Redmond's annual E3 media briefing as it happens and as those questions are answered, on this very page.
Watch Microsoft's Xbox E3 2017 event live right here at 5PM ET
Microsoft is getting down to business a little early this year and kicking off its E3 announcements on Sunday. We're on the scene in Los Angeles ready to bring you all of the news as its announced -- including the latest on Project Scorpio. However, if you'd like to follow the action on stage live, you can do so with Twitch, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Mixer streams. The event is also available on Xbox consoles and broadcast live on Fuse (the TV channel). Just remember: The news is always best served with our witty commentary on the side, so you'll want to keep an eye on our liveblog as well. Microsoft's big event starts at 5PM ET/2PM PT, and we've embedded the livestream below to make things easy for you.
Microsoft's Project Scorpio could cost $499
There's no doubt that Microsoft's Project Scorpio will be expensive given its 4K-ready hardware. But just how expensive? Apparently, Geoff Keighley knows. The well-connected gaming persona now has "confidence" that Project Scorpio will sell for $499 -- about twice as much as the regular price of an Xbox One S as of this writing. He allows himself some wiggle room ("unless something changes today"), but there's good reason to believe he's on the mark: He's the host of both E3 Live and the Game Awards, so he's in a position to know.
Xbox exec reveals Scorpio has 9GB of RAM available for games
We're still a couple of days away from seeing Microsoft officially reveal its Project Scorpio Xbox, but details continue to dribble out. Xbox & Windows gaming platform VP Mike Ybarra tweeted that the team "unlocked extra GB of RAM for (game developers), now 9GB of GDDR5." In April, program manager Kevin Gammill told Gamasutra that Scorpio would ditch the Xbox One's 32MB ESRAM / 8GB GDDR3 setup for specs showing 12GB of GDDR5 RAM built in (the devkits that we've seen feature 24GB of RAM), with 8GB available for games. The rest of the resources are reserved to handle system features, multitasking apps and other non-game elements.
Project Scorpio's generous specs let game makers go wild
Microsoft's Project Scorpio console promises to be seriously powerful compared to the Xbox One, but what good is all that power if your games don't take advantage of it? You might not have to worry too much. The company has dished out details on its Scorpio developer kit, and it's evident that creators will have a relatively easy time making use of the 4K-capable system. To begin with, it's considerably more powerful than the Scorpio console itself, with specs that are closer to a nice gaming PC: it has twice as much RAM (24GB), a slightly faster graphics processor and a 1TB solid-state drive to go alongside the built-in hard drive. Unlike many dev kits, which often force studios to be conservative with their designs until they know the hardware can handle it, Scorpio encourages creators to build the most elaborate game they can and scale back only if they get a little too ambitious.
Microsoft's 'Project Scorpio' Xbox promises true 4K gaming
If you've been wondering just how powerful Microsoft's 'Project Scorpio' Xbox will be, dream no longer. A series of pieces co-written by Eurogamer and Digital Foundry have listed the full specs for the living room console, and suffice to say it's shaping up to be a bit of a beast. Inside each system will be a CPU featuring eight custom x86 cores, clocked at 2.3 GHz, a custom GPU with 40 customised compute units clocked at 1172MHz -- an "unprecedently high clock speed for a console," Eurogamer writes -- and 12GB of GDDR5 RAM. Players will also have 1TB, 2.5-inch hard drive to play around with, and a 4K UHD Blu-ray drive. Take that, PlayStation 4 Pro.
Microsoft will unveil the next Xbox's specs on Thursday
Last fall, Sony outraced the competition in releasing the PS4 Pro, their half-step improvement on current consoles that includes better tech to handle VR gaming. Microsoft's mid-generation successor to the Xbox One, known as Project Scorpio, was in no shape to try beating Sony's to market, but it's rumored to be a far more powerful system. Just how much beefier has been confined to rumor and isolated reports, but soon we'll have the official word on Scorpio's technical guts ahead of its planned full reveal at E3 2017. On Thursday at 9AM ET, Microsoft is releasing the specs for its upcoming system.
The sequel to 'Shadow of Mordor' arrives August 22nd
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor was one of the most important blockbuster games of 2014, proving that an open-world title set in a very familiar fantasy world could still feel fresh and innovative. And apparently, it was popular enough to get a sequel... including on a platform that isn't even out yet. Warner Bros. has unveiled Middle-earth: Shadow of War, a follow-up that will be available on PS4, Windows PCs, the Xbox One and Project Scorpio -- yes, this is one of the first known titles for Microsoft's 4K-capable console. The publisher isn't saying what the Scorpio version will bring to the table, but it'll launch this holiday season. Every other edition arrives on August 22nd.
Microsoft will unveil Xbox Project Scorpio on June 11th
If you're an Xbox fan who's been anxiously awaiting more news on Microsoft's Project Scorpio ever since it was unveiled at E3 last year, you now know exactly when you'll get the full scoop. Microsoft has revealed that its customary E3 briefing will take place on June 11th at 5PM Eastern, and the teaser graphic makes it patently clear that the 4K-capable Scorpio will be the center of attention. There are no fresh clues, to no one's surprise, but it's safe to say this is a big deal when the Redmond crew is shaking up its usual E3 schedule to garner maximum attention. One thing's for sure: we'll be there to give you our first-hand impressions.
4K gaming has a video service to do it justice
The problem with this Ultra HD future we're moving toward is that we're in a weird in-between spot where the most convenient media delivery method (streaming) can't hold a candle to the quality of the source material. The tech-minded folks at at Digital Foundry are acutely aware of this. As such, rather than relying on YouTube's lossy and compressed method of hosting videos, DF has struck out on its own for offering source-quality downloads for its game-tech analysis videos.
Microsoft's 'Project Scorpio' games will run in native 4K
You'd be forgiven for doubting that Microsoft's Project Scorpio could really deliver on the promise of 4K gaming. Most PlayStation 4 Pro games won't run in true 4K, and the current wave of 4K-capable PC video cards cost more than whole consoles. However, Microsoft vows that there won't be any trickery involved with its own titles. In an interview with USA Today, the company's Shannon Loftis says that all first-party games arriving "in the Scorpio time frame" will run in native 4K -- you'll have at least a few games to show what your new TV can do.
Xbox One S helped Microsoft outsell the PS4 in August
The Xbox One outsold the PlayStation 4 in August, thanks to a boost from Microsoft's latest console, the Xbox One S. A 2TB model of the Xbox One S hit shelves on August 2nd for $400 and sales of the new console are bundled under the broader "Xbox One" banner. The Xbox One S supports HDR, 4K gaming, streaming and Blu-ray, and it's 40 percent smaller than the launch model.
Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro reveal was a confident step forward
It's been a good year so far for Sony Interactive Entertainment. Yesterday's PlayStation Meeting continued the momentum from E3 and showed us the next step in its plan for home console domination: the PlayStation 4 Pro. The company's strategy was simple: show, rather than tell. The big news, if you own a fancy UHD display, is that Pro will play nicely with all those extra pixels and show off your screen's HDR capabilities. Unlike with the Xbox One S, Sony also spelled out the benefits of buying a Pro, even if you don't own a 4K TV. The new, beefier machine will make existing games look and perform better on the 1080p TV that's sitting in your living room right now, and it can also give PlayStation VR games a facelift, too. All for $399 this November 10th. Sony's always had the edge on Microsoft with this generation, but a strong finish to 2016 feels like the gap could be widening.
4K consoles will finally make 1080p gaming a reality
Microsoft and Sony have finally announced their new, more powerful console revisions. The PS4 Pro and Project Scorpio promise a significant performance bump over their current-gen counterparts, supposedly ushering in the era of 4K console gaming. Although we will see some 4K games, it's likely that neither console has the power to pull off the higher resolution without compromise. We've heard this story before. When the Xbox 360 was unveiled at E3 in 2005, it was supposed to play games at a crisp 720p or 1080i. The following year, when Sony announced the PlayStation 3, it did so by showing off Gran Turismo HD running at a native 1080i/60, with the promise of 1080p games to come. For the most part, that didn't happen. Instead, many Xbox 360 games upscaled just to hit 720p. The significantly more powerful PS3 also stuck mostly to 720p, with a smattering of 1,280 x 1,080 games (which were then processed to stretch out the horizontal resolution). To my memory, the only 1080p game I had on PlayStation 3 was Fifa Street 3 (I make bad life choices). Oh, and Gran Turismo 5: Prologue let me see my garage (and only my garage) in 1080p. Then came the current console generation and the pitch of true 1080p gaming. Very quickly, that promise unraveled. Xbox One launch titles like Ryse (900p) and Dead Rising 3 (720p) fell short, with only Forza Motorsport 5 hitting 1080p at the expense of anti-aliasing and texture quality. PlayStation 4 titles fared a little better: Infamous Second Son, Killzone Shadow Fall and Knack hit 1080p. But all three games suffered from serious frame-rate issues: Killzone developer Guerrilla Games was forced to add a 30fps lock to the single player through an update and faced a (failed) lawsuit when it was discovered the "1080p 60fps" multiplayer actually ran at 960 x 1,080 and pixels doubled using "temporal reprojection." The biggest cross-platform title of the launch window, Ubisoft's Watch Dogs, hit 792p on Xbox One and 900p on PlayStation 4. Both versions relied on adaptive v-sync (a trick that minimizes stuttering when frames aren't rendered in time) just to stick to 30fps. Things have improved a little since then, as developers now understand the consoles' respective limitations. We now see some 1080p games that mostly stick to 30fps, with exclusive titles Rise of the Tomb Raider on Xbox One and Bloodborne on PlayStation 4 being prime examples. Even so, the vast majority of titles struggle, with shooters relying on dynamic scaling to hit 60fps and other games sticking with 30fps caps just to get by. There are outliers, of course: Lots of last-gen remasters are hitting the holy grail of 1080p and 60fps (1080p60). And some games -- like Forza Motorsport 6 on the Xbox One and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain on the PS4 -- run almost entirely at 1080p60.
Microsoft says this might be the last console generation
Earlier today I sat down with Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft's head of Xbox games marketing, to talk about Xbox One, Project Scorpio and the future of console gaming. Here are Greenberg's thoughts on three key topics.
