E3 2019 is going to be a big one for Microsoft- as big as E3 has ever been for them, if they are to be believed. They’ve confirmed they’ll be showing off 14 first party titles (of which we can expect at least some to be new IPs and/or revivals of old ones), while if reports are to be believed, there’s going to be some killer third party announcements as well.
But there’s also the question of what they’ll be talking about in terms of the hardware stuff. Sony have started peeling back the layers of secrecy on the PS5 even ahead of an official reveal for the console, and many feel that Microsoft need to start doing the same, or risk losing ground to a competitor that is already flying high.
According to known Microsoft insider Brad Sams of Thurott, Microsoft will indeed be talking about the next generation of Xbox. According to Sams, the final specs and configurations of both, the lower end Xbox Anaconda and the higher end Xbox Lockhart, are still in a flux right now and are yet to be nailed down. As such, Microsoft won’t be doing a blow by blow reveal of specs for their new Xbox consoles, but will be speaking of a few things in particular.
The report claims that we can expect to hear about Microsoft including a solid state drive in their consoles as well, just as Sony have done, while other things we’ll hear mentioned are Navi graphics, Zen 2 architecture, other AMD components being used, and backward compatibility (unsurprisingly). Microsoft will also allegedly be speaking about how the next Xbox will run Xbox One X games and enhance them even further.
As always, don’t take this as official confirmation, but it seems believable enough on all fronts. It would be quite surprising, in fact, if Microsoft didn’t talk about the next Xbox at least in some capacity. In fact, given how Microsoft wants to have the more powerful system on the market when next gen rolls around, the specs mentioned by the report also seem par for the course.
Meanwhile, in the same report, Sams also spoke of Microsoft’s software showings, which might include at least three new IPs, a Fable 4 announcement, and Microsoft’s strongest E3 third party showing to date. Read more on that through here.
