Microsoft reveals beefy specs of new ‘Scorpio’ Xbox One

Talking to website Eurogamer, Microsoft has officially taken the wraps off of the Xbox One Scorpio’s specs. Not so shocking – it’s a monster.

Scorpio is coming

This whole mid-cycle console refresh thing that started with the PS4 Pro last Holiday is something new. Sure, there’ve been console redesigns before, that’s not the new part, but radically overhauling the guts? Yeah, that’s different.

In the case of the PS4 Pro, it was somewhat underwhelming. Yes there was a bump in ability for Sony’s latest, but it wasn’t a head-and-shoulders thing really. That however, is not set to be the case with this Fall’s effort from Microsoft.

We’ve know that for some time though, so to say that the Scorpio is a powerful machine shouldn’t come as a shock. Actually, to say that it will be the ‘most powerful console out there’ shouldn’t come as a shock either. It wasn’t all that long ago that insiders said that publicly.

This is though, the first time that we’re getting a look at the actual specs. Hard numbers have been nonexistent till just today, and now that we actually do get a look? Yeah, it’s a juggernaut.

While some of the actually numbers are -honestly- lost on me, I can tell you what I am impressed with.

Number one, the Scorp has 12GB of GDDR5, which bests the PS4 Pro by 4GBs. “Memory bandwidth”? Try 326GB/s. The Pro has 218GB, for comparison. And that all-important optical drive? It’s a 4k UHD Blu-ray drive, which is actually on par with the Xbox One S, available now.

Maybe the most impressive things though, comes from what Eurogamer said when they got a look at Forza running on the hardware. The demo ran in native 4k resolution at 60fps, to which the reporter added that Scorpio will hit it’s native 4k goal on most games with ease.

For its part, Microsoft is saying that the new console will offer gamers a boost in quality for base Xbox One games as well. And you better believe that there’ll be 100% backwards compatibility. So if you trade in that X1 that you have now, it certainly seems as though you’ll still be able to play all your current games on the Scorpio.

All in all, it sounds pretty incredible, though there are two things that we don’t have info on yet: form factor and price.

Smart money says that those things’ll be cleared up come E3 time, this June. Microsoft has said that you will indeed get a look at Scorpio’s curves at the show, though I think it’s safe to assume the price will be revealed also.

That’s the only concern here actually, the price. There’s no way that it’s not going to be high, but you should expect that. Scorpio isn’t going to be marketed as a low-end machine, or something that’s going to appeal to everyone. The base Xbox One and the S model have that end of things covered. Scorpio is high-end, and it will have a high-end price to go along with it. So keep that in mind.

And of course, the last piece of the puzzle is going to be the launch date. You can expect to be able to buy a Scorpio this Fall/Holiday, though the actual date will probably not be announced till E3 as well.

Stay tuned folks, we’ll have more as it’s announced. For now, you can read the full specs and more right here on Eurogamer.