Project Scarlett: Microsoft Announces Next Generation of Xbox Gaming Consoles

Just days before the biggest video gaming event of the year – Electronic Entertainment Expo 2019 - begins on 11 June, Microsoft made a major announcement: it’s rolling out a new generation of Xbox consoles.

The console known at the moment only as Project Scarlett is set for release in fall 2020, coinciding with the release of Halo Infinite. The device was announced at the Xbox press conference, a pre-E3 event on 9 June.

The new device will be four times more powerful than Xbox One X and will feature cutting edge features like ray tracing support and SSD drives that promise 40x performance increases with no loading times. The developers also claim the system will be capable of 8K resolution and framerates of 120 frames per second.

Microsoft touted the console as a “bigger leap than any generation we've done before,” with Xbox division head Phil Spencer describing it as the “most powerful and highest performance console we've ever designed.”

The company dropped hints about the upcoming console long before the official announcement- they hid a secret message in the daily countdown videos for the Xbox press conference. Every video contained one of the following snippets of text hidden in the background: "R 255," "G 36," and, finally, "B 0". When put into a colour palette, this digital combination of red, green and blue corresponds to the colour scarlet.

​The E3 event kicks off Tuesday, 11 June, at Los Angeles Convention Center and ends on Friday, 14 June. The annual expo includes presentations from the world’s leading video game and hardware developers.