Earlier this month, Microsoft did something console manufacturers haven’t done for many years. It announced key details of its forthcoming Project Scorpio console — an update to the Xbox One — via a set of exclusive features on the video game news site, Eurogamer.
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In the modern games industry the strict control of information, especially regarding hardware, has become something of a corporate obsession. To cede control of a major revelation — in this case the technical specifications of a forthcoming machine — was a fascinating, but intelligent move. It added a sense of impartiality and validity to all the specs and stats that came out of the reveal, lending the information some real authority that would have been missing from an official press release. It let gamers start processing the meaning of the machine for themselves.
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But there are still big questions for Microsoft: Is there really a large enough audience for a high-powered version of a console that’s barely three years into its lifecycle? Is this really just about the 4K television industry?
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To understand Scorpio, you have to look at what’s happened to Microsoft since the launch of the Xbox 360, a decade ago. That machine was a revelation — powerful, innovative and sporting the best console multiplayer infrastructure around. But in this generation, from the infamous unveiling of the Xbox One (and the pounding Sony gave the machine at E3) to the huge sales of the PlayStation 4, Microsoft has been playing catch-up. Scorpio is very much a full-stop on that — it’s an attempt to reclaim the innovative and technological high ground.
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Officially announced at the E3 games conference last June, Project Scorpio is an impressively powerful new version of the Xbox One, due out this Christmas. Featuring eight custom x86 cores clocked at 2.3GHz, a 1172MHz graphics…