Microsoft may have lost the battle for king of current-gen consoles to Sony's PlayStation 4, but the company that brought us the Halo, Gears of War, and Forza franchises is looking to take the crown in the war of next-gen gaming hardware.

After Sony announced details on the rumored PlayStation 5, all eyes have turned to Xbox for a strong counter attack. At E3 2019, Phil Spencer and the gang dropped an exciting update on their mysterious next-gen console announced at last year'sE3. From top-of-the-line specs, xCloud service, one launch title game confirmed, and a release window, Project Scorpio is Microsoft's new console baby, and it has fans excited.

Little has been shared thus far, but with the console only a year and a half until release, many more details on Project Scarlett will surely soon follow. As for now, here's everything we know so far about Microsoft's next console.

Release Date

During its E3 conference, Microsoft announced that Project Scarlett will be launching during the holiday 2020 season. This gives them a short leg over Sony who hasn't revealed any information regarding the release date of their next-gen hardware. If they follow the same formula as the Xbox One, Microsoft will hold a major reveal event for the console ahead of E3 2020.

Price

As of now, there is currently no confirmed price for Project Scarlett, but with many rumored hardware specifications already listed, many experts have calculated the console will most likely have a price range between $399-$499.

Specifications

On the Xbox website, Project Scarlett is stated to "set a new bar for console power, speed and performance." With all the specs that have already been confirmed, that statement will likely be true. In a ViDoc released at E3, the Xbox team revealed the console will be equipped a custom-designed AMD processor, high bandwidth GDDR6 memory, next-gen ray tracing, and a next-gen solid state drive (SSD). These specs will give developers the power they need to bring their creative visions to life while thousands of gamers will enjoy console gaming at 8K resolution at 120 frames per second with minimal load times.

Microsoft also reveals that the hardware will be 4x more powerful than the Xbox One X and has over 40x performance increases over current generation consoles. If all is true, games are truly in for a next-gen experience come holiday 2020.

Games

So far, at least one console exclusive game is confirmed. At E3, Phil Spencer announced that 343's Halo Infinite will be a launch title for Project Scarlett. Besides that, it's anyone's guess. The Xbox One launched with the console exclusive Forza Motorsport 5, so it's more than likely Microsoft is planning to drop another sequel to its famous Forza racing series along with Project Scarlett.

Check out trailers for potential Project Scarlett games below.

Halo Infinite 

News Updates

Cross-Generational Support

In an interview with Business Insider, Phil Spencer confirmed that “original Xbox games and Xbox 360 games that are backward compatible now on your Xbox One" will play on the next Xbox. He continued, "your Xbox One games will play, your accessories will play."

To further the incentive of backwards compatibility, Spencer unveils that games with large existing communities will continue to grow through developer support on the next Xbox.

“I don’t want to announce anything about what another game team is doing,” Spencer said, “But I think what we would say at the highest level is if you talk about these games that have such massive communities today, a lot of those developers and studios are going to want to think about how they grow their community – not how they take it to zero and try to rebuild it.”

Project xCloud

Players looking for the "Netflix of gaming", Project Scarlett may be your go-to choice. Similar to the movie streaming service, Project xCloud will offer an instant library of games to be streamed directly to your device. According to Kareem Choudhry, Corporate Vice President of Gaming Cloud at Microsoft, "there are currently more than 1,900 games in development for Xbox One, all of which could run on Project xCloud."

There's still lots we don't know about Microsoft's ambitious streaming service, but Phil Spencer has pretty excited after stating, “When you look at other options out there, that library of content that’s available is such a critical thing. We have decades of working with partners to bring that together as an industry."

As more details on Microsoft's Project Scarlett are announced, stay tuned in here for updates.