Report- MS working on 2 next-gen Scarlett family consoles for release Holiday 2020, handheld gaming peripherals with Razer

[DonFerrari]

AsGryffynn said:

shikamaru317 said:

Yes, Scarlett is the family name for all next-gen Xbox projects it seems, while Lockhart is the weaker next-gen console and Anaconda is the stronger next-gen console. In terms of specs, Anaconda is rumored to be quite a bit above XB1 X and Lockhart actually, we've heard rumors of it having at least a 12 tflop Navi GPU, which is double the 6 tflop GPU in XB1 X on paper (and probably more than double in real world performance when you take architectural improvements on Navi into consideration), and I wouldn't be surprised if it has 16 GB of GDDR6 memory as opposed to 12 GB of GDDR5 in XB1 X and Lockhart.

Not sure what you mean on the 2nd paragraph.

Most likely because the weak Jaguar CPU in XB1 X can't handle next-gen games without causing framerate issues, we've already seen several current gen games having issues caused by the weak Jaguar CPU's, those issues will only be worse next-gen with games being optimized for the Ryzen CPU's in Anaconda and PS5. I'm assuming that Lockhart is going to have the XB1 X GPU and memory paired with a low-end Ryzen CPU which should prevent any CPU bottlenecks from happening. Lockhart kind of feels like a middle finger to XB1 X buyers for sure though, and it is exactly why MS should have used a Ryzen CPU in XB1 X to start with even if they had to sell at a small loss to do it, so that it could have played next-gen games at 1080p with no issues.

If what I gather is correct, this means Anaconda won't be a drastic improvement of the One X. It will only shore up on the only area where the X is lacking: CPU. Frame rate falls when the amount of NPCs is so high the current CPU becomes unwieldy (this is what led to the anomalous performance gap in games like Assassins' Creed or Fallout 4, where the best OG XONE rig often performed better than the PS4 despite the GPU and unified RAM). 

Not to mention, if they approach AMD now, they can secure a good deal for a "maxed out" rig to assemble into the new console and thus bar Sony from having superior hardware next gen, because going further will end up costing a lot more. 

I am just glad they've decided to stick around. My gaming future would've been sad if they left. Without Origin, Sony, Nintendo and Steam, the only option left is MS. 

Why they approaching AMD now would prevent Sony from having the superior HW?

Soundwave said:
Gaming consoles are simply going to become more and more like the PC model where the consumer has multiple hardware config choices and games run on multiple hardware configs.

That's just how its going to be IMO for all three of Sony/MS/Nintendo eventually. The days of a platform being just "one system" are nearing an end.

Still there are plenty of customers that don't want that, they like the simpler way on consoles where it's easy to just buy one console and have access to all its game without having to compare details among SKUs.