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Confirmed: Microsoft will unveil Project Scorpio this week

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E3 is still a few months away, but it appears that Microsoft won’t be waiting much longer to fully unveil Project Scorpio, its beefed-up Xbox One console. A new rumor suggests that new information will be made available this Thursday, April 6, along with full technical specifications that should let us know exactly what the “most powerful console” means.

Industry insider “shinobi602,” who previously revealed the existence of the guerrilla role-playing game that turned out to be Horizon: Zero Dawn, corroborated the rumor, saying that there would be an announcement this week and that the “hardware sounds damn impressive.”

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Podcast The Inner Circle also claimed over the weekend that Eurogamer’s Digital Foundry would be fully releasing the console’s technical specifications on April 6. Digital Foundry previously reported on a supposed internal document from last July that claimed that Project Scorpio would be doing away with eSRAM, but that developers would have to continue supporting it as the Xbox One and Xbox One S would still make heavy use of it going forward. The document also says that Project Scorpio will sport a 6 TFLOP GPU, which is substantially higher than the PlayStation 4 Pro’s 4.2 TFLOP GPU.

Today, Digital Foundry tweeted confirmation that it will indeed exclusively be revealing some details about Project Scorpio. There’s even a time and date:

To clear up the speculation: @digitalfoundry will have an exclusive Xbox Scorpio reveal on @eurogamer this Thursday at 2pm UK / 6am Pacific. pic.twitter.com/bacxOGerjJ

— Digital Foundry (@digitalfoundry) April 4, 2017

Project Scorpio is expected to offer native 4K gaming on its launch titles — something that is currently only possible on a handful of PlayStation 4 Pro titles — and could feature an impressive 12GB of RAM, as well as built-in virtual reality support, potentially with the Oculus Rift. Like PlayStation 4 Pro, it won’t feature any exclusive titles, but its technical capabilities could make Xbox One games look substantially better than they did on the original console or the Xbox One S. Project Scorpio is expected to launch this holiday season, and will carry a higher price tag than the current Xbox One console.

Updated on 4-4-2017 by Mark Coppock: Added Digital Foundry’s confirmation.

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Gabe Gurwin
Gabe Gurwin
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Gabe Gurwin has been playing games since 1997, beginning with the N64 and the Super Nintendo. He began his journalism career…
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