There seems to be some confusion in the gaming community as to whether or not Xbox’s next console, Project Scorpio, is meant to be a full generational upgrade. Ori and the Blind Forest developer Thomas Mahler has responded to this by saying it is a “full blown next-gen machine.”
After Phil Spencer tweeted that he played his first games on an early Scorpio unit, a thread on NeoGAF popped up to discuss this. In this thread, a user asks if the Scorpio is Xbox’s equivalent to the PS4 Pro or if it is a new generation. Mahler clarifies that the Scorpio is indeed a next-gen machine according to him, while also taking a slight jab at the PlayStation 4 Pro.
Mahler’s full response reads, “All consoles now are x86 PCs and the architecture will remain the same, that’s why Sony was able to quickly iterate on the PS4 and make a beefier version of it. Scorpio is a next-gen machine with the added benefit that all your old games will still be compatible. From this point on, similar to PCs, you’ll not lose your library when you buy a next-gen system. I guess since NeoGAF is confsued, Microsoft will need to do a little work to make it clear to everyone that Scorpio isn’t just a half-assed upgrade (which the PS4 Pro kinda is…), but a full blown next-gen machine that’s just backwards-compatible to your current library.”
We will likely hear more about Project Scorpio closer to E3 2017.
Source: Reddit
Jennifer is a games journalist, former games journalist and PR Manager at Gearbox. They contributed 234 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: went on to write for Windows Central and later managed PR for Gearbox Software.