A More Powerful Xbox One May Be Arriving in 2017

By Reed Strength | May 27, 2016 | 11:49am

Photo via flickr (@gamesforpublic.de)

Video Games News Xbox One

Players currently on the fence about purchasing an Xbox One may want to hold out just a bit longer. Per Kotaku, three unnamed sources close to Microsoft have revealed that a more powerful version of the console is on the way.

According to these sources, the project, codenamed “Scorpio,” features a more powerful GPU and support for Occulus Rift VR. Although this GPU upgrade could mean running games in stunning 4K, this may result in long loading times, as there have been no reports of an upgrade to the console’s I/O transfer speed.

A companion report from Polygon also stated that Microsoft may be building “Scorpio” to run at six Teraflops. This upgrade could reportedly make it “four times more powerful” than the current Xbox One.

In addition, a more compact version of the current console with a 2 TB hard drive could drop as early as this year.

The unnamed sources told Kotaku that both console upgrades are part of a wider Microsoft project to converge Windows and Xbox. Codenamed “Helix,” this project would see major Microsoft game releases, such as Halo Wars 2 and Sea of Thieves, available on both Xbox One as well as PC.

We could be seeing more frequent incremental hardware updates to the console rather than the five-year revisions of the past. Current owners shouldn’t worry, though; the sources say new games released with the new hardware in mind would be backwards-compatible with older models.