Since the announcement of "Project Scorpio," Microsoft has been telling gamers and developers that this is a console designed with 4K in mind. Not only for movies, but most importantly, video games.
It has been the talk of the town, but many were skeptical of the 4K/60 frames per second claim. If we look at the PC market right now, many of the most expensive graphic cards are unable to deliver 4K games properly, causing some to wonder if Project Scorpio with its 6-teraflop GPU can deliver.
Recently, the company claims it can certainly deliver 4K gaming with the 2017 console, but according to Microsoft's Albert Penello in an interview with The Inner Circle, gamers should not expect every game to hit the 4K and 60 fps mark. He said developers have the option to do whatever they want, which simply means they can choose to create 4K native games, or deliver at a lower resolution and upscale to 4K.
"I think people get confused and say our messaging is weird. Not every developer is going to use it that way. Not every developer is going to decide to take that 6 TFLOPs and do 4K/60fps with it," says Penello. "They might decide for their game, their engine that they want to do something different and that's fine. But our goal is to build a box that delivers true 4K games at the same level of fidelity that you see on your current Xbox One games."
Despite third-party developers having the room to do whatever they want, Microsoft has decided to restrict itself to focus on 4K games. Penello said creating games at 4K is Microsoft's own goal, so fans should expect all titles from the company's studios in the future after Project Scorpio to be 4K.
We can see this already with several of the company's upcoming video games. Forza Horizon 3 and Gears of War 4 are both 4K-capable on PC, and we expect the Xbox One versions to have 4K support, but will only shine when played on the new system.
Microsoft is pushing Project Scorpio as the most powerful console ever when it's released later in the 2017 holiday season. Along with 6 teraflops of GPU power, the console is rumored to have 12 GB of GDDR5 RAM, and should be able to produce HDR games similar to that of the Xbox One S.
When it comes down to pricing, we can't say right now, but Microsoft is calling this a premium experience, so do not expect it to be cheap.
