Information About Two New Xbox Consoles Codenamed ‘Scarlett’ Has Leaked

You might remember, but at E3 earlier this year, Xbox boss, Phil Spencer revealed that not one, but two new Xbox consoles were already in the works. He also slipped that they were codenamed ‘Scarlett’.

Well, information about these two consoles has leaked out today courtesy of Thurrott. In all honesty, it’s nothing too surprising and seems like a very plausible direction for the Xbox brand to head in.

The two consoles are set to release in 2020 (which makes complete sense). The first of these two consoles is set to be your pretty run of the mill traditional console, which can play games locally and can’t be upgraded. It’s expected to be quite significantly more powerful than the current Xbox One.

Where it will get interesting in this second box, which won’t be as powerful hardware wise. It will just be able to accept controller inputs as well as display an image to the screen. However, this will be primarily a streaming box or an ‘Xbox-lite’ if you will. It will further the Xbox Game Pass service and use the cloud to play these games remotely. Microsoft would essentially be leveraging their Azure servers for use with this Xbox console.

It’s very clear at this point that Microsoft know that they are onto a winner with the Xbox Game Pass service, and if they can continue to build their subscriber base up, they’ll have long-term financial success and be able to insure that their first party games are successful for them, not just on a units sold basis.

Obviously, especially here in Australia, streaming games would be a problem for most (if not all of us). Thurrott is also reporting that Microsoft has managed to crack the latency issue with cloud-based gaming and likens the lag more to a multiplayer match rather than existing streaming solutions.

Apparently, this Xbox-Lite console is further along than the traditional one (probably due to the Xbox One X releasing), but both are scheduled for release in 2020.

Thanks, Thurrott.