Xbox Project Scarlett launches holiday 2020 with Halo Infinite

Microsoft has announced that its next-generation Xbox, Project Scarlett, will launch holiday 2020 with Halo Infinite.

The reveal trailer above was shown during Microsoft’s Xbox E3 2019 briefing. “Unmatched power and speed ushers in a new level of game play performance and the future of gaming,” reads the trailer description.

Microsoft says in the video: “At the heart of our next-generation console is our custom designed processor leveraging the latest Zen 2 and Navi technology from our partners at AMD.

“From a pure processing perspective this is four times more powerful than the Xbox One X. We’re leveraging high bandwidth GDDR6 to ensure that we’re getting the best performance possible.”

It adds: “We’re looking at frame rates up to 120 frames per second, 8K capability, variable refresh rate, next-gen ray tracing — it’s real time because it’s hardware accelerated for the first time ever.

“We’ve created a new generation of SSD. We’re actually using the SSD as virtual RAM, resulting in more than 40 times performance increases over the current generation.

“When you can move through worlds without waiting for screens to load, that speed, that performance is what the next generation’s about.”

Microsoft has also announced that Project Scarlett will feature backwards compatibility with games from all previous generations of Xbox consoles. It will be compatible with all previous Xbox accessories too.

Additionally, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has confirmed that Microsoft’s next-gen console will include a physical disc drive.

Xbox Game Studios boss Matt Booty said this week that the arrival of Project Scarlett in tandem with advancements in cloud technology means we could be about to witness “as big a transition as when we went from 2D to 3D”.