Rumours surrounding the next generation of consoles and what Microsoft has in store for us with their horizons expanding to the realms of streaming and what have you have been circulating for a number of months now, and thanks to a recent report by French outlet Jeuxvideo, they’ve been kicked up into an absolute frenzy again.
The outlet is reporting that Microsoft plans to reveal its plans for Project Scarlett, the name for their plans for the next generation of Xbox, in full at E3 2019. As per the report, Microsoft will be revealing the two previously rumoured variants for the next Xbox at E3 2019- currently codenamed Xbox Anaconda and Xbox Lockhart. While Lockhart is a cheaper, less powerful version of the variant, which is also completely digital and streaming-based and will not come with a disc drive, Anaconda will be the Xbox One X equivalent, coming with much more powerful hardware capabilities, and also including a disc drive.
There will be some commonalities across both variants of the hardware as far as specs are concerned. Both variants will have a CPU of custom 8 cores – 16 zen threads 2, as well as SSD hard drives of 1TB NVMe at 1+ GB/s. That’s where the similarities end, though. As per the report, the Xbox Lockhart will have a custom NAVI GPU of 4+ teraflops and 12GB of GDDR6 memory, while the Xbox Anaconda will have a custom NAVI GPU of 12+ teraflops and 16GB of GDDR6 memory.
According to the report, following their unveilings at E3 2019, Microsoft will be launching both variants of the next Xbox by the end of 2020. What’s interesting is that Halo Infinite, which would revealed at last year’s E3 without any target platforms or release date mentioned, is supposed to be a launch title for the next generation of Xbox, if the report is to be believed.
Though Halo Infinite is being saved for the next Xbox, though, Microsoft still has some stuff planned for the Xbox One. As per the report, other than the already announced Gears 5, Ninja Theory’s next game – which will be their first game since being acquired by Microsoft – is due out in early 2020.
Right now, it’s best to take these reports with a grain of salt, as is the case with any report of such nature, but it does give us some interesting hints about exciting things that could end up happening. Certainly, this would definitely be in line with Phil Spencer’s recent statements about Microsoft planning to go all out at E3 this year. Either way, stay tuned to GamingBolt, and we’ll keep you updated in case any new info comes our way.
