After months of speculation, Microsoft finally reveals their “Project Scorpio” they have been working on and hyping up. The official name, Xbox One X, seems a little safe, but still drives home that it falls within the Xbox One family. Of course Phil Spencer, arguably the only public speaker with any charisma for Microsoft, gives up the stage for Kareem Choudhry to rattle of some, admittedly impressive, specs.

Spec highlights include:

• 6 teraflops GPU clocked at 1.172Ghz
• 8 core CPU @ 2.3GHz
• 12GBs of GDDR5 memory
• 326GB/s of memory bandwidth
• 245W internal PSU
• 8 million plus pixels
• HDR
• Wide color gamut
• Premium Dolby Atmos sound
• 4K UHD Blu-ray playback
• Liquid-cooled vapor chamber

As always Microsoft wanted to really drive home that this isn’t a new generation console. It is primarily made for the spec enthusiasts who want the best console experience. All of the Xbox One games and accessories will work for the Xbox One X so upgrading is simple. Even the look has the resemblance of the Xbox One S, but a real feat is somehow they packed in all that hardware and still made it roughly the same size, if not even a little smaller (exact dimensions have not been revealed), than the Xbox One S.

Of course Microsoft is going to be touting the big key buzz word for their conference and XOX, 4K resolution, but what about us 1080p players? Well, Microsoft said that new games for XOX will use a “super sampling” technique to make games look better on 1080p tv’s as well as run better due to the extra horsepower it packs. How about already released games, how will it effect those? Microsoft has over 30 third-party titles that will be releasing XOX support updates and of course Microsoft will be giving their first part titles the XOX treatment as well. While we don’t know the exact list of games yet, they did announce that Gears of War 4, Forza Horizon 3, Killer Instinct, Halo Wars 2, and Minecraft will all be updated free of charge to 4K support.

That’s all fine and dandy but what about the price of this? Rumors were all over the place for this one, people hoping for a $399 deal, others were expecting a premium $599. Xbox One X will be $499, the same price as the original Xbox One with Kinect. Considering the specs this thing is packing, $499 is actually reasonable, and if Microsoft can keep their promise of hitting that 4K mark for the majority of games I don’t think it will disappoint early adopters.

 

Microsoft is planning for a November 7th release date for the Xbox One X.