Xbox Scorpio To Be 'The Most Powerful Console Ever Made,' But PCs Are Still A Thing

There’s another Xbox on the way, though we don’t know much more about it than that. Last week, Microsoft announced that the Xbox Scorpio is coming our way holiday 2107, and that it’s going to be nearly 5 times as powerful as the Xbox One. According to Xbox Marketing head Aaron Greenberg, it’s meant to be the most powerful console ever made. From an interview with dualshockers:

“We’re building a beast. It’s gonna be the most powerful console ever made, and as a guy who was here when we built the original Xbox, that being such a powerful box, and we pioneered with Xbox Live, and some of those innovative games, it really feels like we’re getting back to our roots. And I think the team here, we’re all gamers and we love what we do, and  I‘ve never seen the morale this high. People are fired up about what we’re delivering this year for our fans, and the vision of what we’re doing with Project Scorpio. It’s a pretty special time.”

For those keeping score at home, the most powerful console ever made is currently the PS4, and will likely be the PS4 Neo for a time in the fall. Such is the horse race.
Like Microsoft said in the reveal video, this is the “we heard you console.” It’s almost like an apology. Microsoft lost big by neglecting the core gaming audience and sacrificing both price and computing power in favor of the Kinect, and the company appears to be running in the opposite direction with this one. In short, it’s all about power — more power than its Sony equivalent, more power than any other console out there. Nowhere near as much power as a high-end PC, of course.
It’s all a gamble: the Xbox Scorpio and PS4 Neo both seem to be focused on 4K gaming, and they’re a big shift in the way we think about console generations. Luckily for Microsoft, the Xbox isn’t the only dog it has in this fight. Windows 10 is sort of a big deal to the company too, and any weakness in console gaming might benefit the company just as much as a strong Scorpio.
That’s always my wonder with these projects: Sony has said that it’s making Neo to keep gamers from migrating to PC, but I’m not sure what can be done to stem the tide of power-focused gamers moving away from console. Power is obviously important to console gamers, but we’ve only ever seen it in this simple Xbox vs. Sony vs. Nintendo system. Will gamers want opt for a high-end console experience when the true high-end obviously belongs to PC? We’ll see.