GameCentral
Microsoft has revealed the real name and design for Project Scarlett at The Game Awards, as well as new game Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2.
If you stayed up late to watch The Game Awards you would’ve got a major surprise when one of the first things to be announced was, not a new game, but a new console.
The codename Project Scarlett no longer has to be used, as Microsoft revealed that their new console is called Xbox Series X.
Which, err… is terrible, really. Probably even worse than Xbox One given how easily it’s going to be confused with the current gen Xbox One X. You would’ve thought they’d learn from the abject failure of the Wii U, but this seems to make exactly the same mistake in terms of confusing names.
But Microsoft has announced it now, so there’s no going back, and clearly the idea is that people will just refer to it as ‘Xbox’ once it’s established and the Xbox One is forgotten.
The name itself implies that there will be several models of the console, which seems to reinforce recent rumours of a more powerful model and a more entry level version – although none of that was specifically addressed by Microsoft.
In fact, they didn’t really say anything and we only know that you can lay the console down horizontally thanks to a brief interview with Xbox boss Phil Spencer on GameSpot.
Vertical seems to be the default orientation though, where the console looks more like an Amazon Echo, or perhaps a Wi-Fi router tower, than a traditional design.
When stood vertically the footprint is only about as much as a controller so it’s pretty small and according to Microsoft very quiet – and they do have good form on that given how silently the Xbox One runs compared to the noisy PlayStation 4.
There’s also a new wireless controller, which doesn’t seem to have a name, that features a PlayStation 4 style Share button for capturing screenshots and video. It also works on all existing Xbox One consoles and PCs and has the new D-pad from the Elite Series 2 joypads.
Spencer didn’t offer any detailed information about the tech specs, except for confirmation that the console will feature a NVMe SSD and use top-of-the-line GDDR6 memory as RAM.
Xbox Series X is bigger than you think (in terms of size and popularity) Xbox Series X release date and price Although it was exactly what was expected Microsoft confirmed the release date for the Xbox Series X would be Christmas 2020.
Nothing was said about the price but, according to Phil Spencer, the console will be four times more powerful than the Xbox One X, which also matches up with the recently leaked tech specs.
It’s also now confirmed that Halo Infinite will be a cross-gen release, so it’ll be out on both Xbox One X and Xbox Series X. Which are two completely different formats from different generations of hardware. Do you see how silly and confusing that looks when you write it out like that, Microsoft? Do you see?!
Announced at the same was Senua’s Saga: Hellblade 2. The trailer was allegedly running in real-time and if so, the graphics were hugely impressive and better than most pre-rendered titles for other games.
We initially assumed it was a prequel, given it seems to show a Viking attack on what is presumably somewhere in Scotland, but it’s being described as a sequel – so we’ll have to wait and see whether that’s strictly accurate in terms of story timeframe.
No release date was mentioned but developer Ninja Theory were working on it before they were bought by Microsoft last year, so it should be fairly far along by now.
