https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-JO61zNhhI

With Sony gearing up for a VR and 4K ready Playstation 4 replacement and Nintendo toiling away at making the NX something that can visually compete with its game industry adversaries, it makes sense that Microsoft would follow suit and make a new version of their console as well. Today at E3, those plans were formally unveiled in the form of Project Scorpio, a newer model of the Xbox One that – according to Microsoft – will be the most powerful console on the market at the time of its planned 2017 release.

Sporting an 8 core CPU and an impressive 6 teraflops of computing power, Project Scorpio aims to bring console gaming more in line with the kind of quality high-end PC gamers currently experience.

Microsoft reassured owners of the original Xbox One (As well as the newly announced Xbox One S) that future games would work across all platforms, but that better visual fidelity would be unlocked when playing those games on Project Scorpio.

An example was given by Phil Spencer, who mentioned Halo 5 and its frequent dips in resolution that it employs to maintain a steady 60 frames per second. According to Spencer, Project Scorpio will not have that problem, since Halo 5 will maintain the highest resolution at all times when running on the new hardware.

This means that it’s highly likely many previously released Xbox One titles will benefit from Project Scorpio’s processing power and gain well-deserved framerate and resolution upgrades.

Of course, the main draw is the new system’s support of 4K and VR gaming, which it has primarily been developed for. No doubt 2017 will be an interesting year for gamers, with all three major console manufacturers releasing new hardware.