As 2018 comes to an end, we’re getting closer and closer to the next generation of consoles. Today, we’ve got some more information about the Xbox Scarlett family, as well as a breakdown of the various codenames in use by Microsoft. These Xbox Scarlett rumors come from Jez Corden of Windows Central and were later corroborated by Brad Sams of Thurrott.com. Brad previously broke the news about Xbox Scarlett and the family of devices it entailed, as well as Microsoft’s plans for a disc-less Xbox One.
Here’s what they had to say:
There are several codenames that Brad explained. For starters, it’s important to understand that Scarlett is a family of devices – it encompasses several plans and pieces of hardware. There are two devices under Scarlett: the first is Anaconda and the second is Lockhart. These are being referred to as Scarlett Pro and Scarlett Arcade respectively. Anaconda is considered to be a successor to the Xbox One X, whereas Lockhart would replace the Xbox One S. It is not clear whether or not Lockhart is also the aforementioned dedicated streaming console. If not, that would suggest that there are three devices in the Scarlett family.
Regarding Project xCloud, the current iteration is called Anthem and is based on Xbox One S hardware. There’ll be a newer version of Anthem that focuses on reducing hardware costs, while a version of xCloud based on Anaconda specs is coming as well.
The codenames aren’t stopping, as Maverick is the project name for the disc-less Xbox One, which Brad claims is launching sometime in Spring 2019. Finally, Brad says that AMD is in fact the supplier for the next-gen Xbox hardware. He also believes that the hardware will be using Zen 2 architecture and next-gen GPU hardware but that exact details are still out of reach.
Moving from hardware to software, Brad says that Microsoft has been working on something called GameCore, the evolution of UWP. The idea is that it will make developing games across Xbox and PC easier for both platforms.
This is all fascinating information. As time goes on and we get closer to the inevitable launch of Sony and Microsoft’s next consoles, we can expect more details to emerge and specifics to be leaked.
