La Microsoft E3 conference stood out for the official presentation of Project Scarlett, next generation xbox that will bring great innovations in terms of speed and graphic power. and although Microsoft finally unveiled its next console, there was still an unanswered question among users. Hadn't we agreed that we would have two consoles?
It will be one and not two consoles that Microsoft launches in 2020
The doubts are based, since if we go back to the E3 conference in 2018, Phil Spencer announced that they were working on two platforms that would see the light of day in the future. Later we would know that these two platforms would be Lockhart y Anaconda, two consoles that would appear on the roadmap planned by the company for 2020, but that would quickly vanish (or cease to make sense) with the confirmation of Project Scarlett.
What happened you already know. The Xbox executive specified that they were completely focused on Scarlett, thus confirming the completion of efforts with the backward compatibility program (as announced hours later) and indirectly dropping that there would be no more second console to present.
But many did not want to see reality, and we ourselves, without confirmation or official statements, either. But now thanks to an interview conducted by Business Insider To Spencer, we know that Scarlett will indeed be the only console that will see the light of day in 2020. With a joking tone, Spencer responded to the question of why he said consoles in the plural at E3, assuring that with the launch of Xbox One S All-Digital Edition There would already be two consoles announced.
Obviously the phrase was used to get out of trouble, since we all know that his first announcement referred to next-generation consoles. Why has Microsoft changed its mind?
Why won't Microsoft release two next-gen consoles?
Both Paul Thurrot and the people of Digital Foundry agree on the thoughts related to this decision. After speaking with people close to Microsoft and related to the industry, they all agree that if you develop two systems with different potential, the developers in charge of making games will have to work on the less powerful version first to later rescale to the more powerful platform.
This is simply done for ease of use, as doing it the other way around would make things quite complicated. What do you get with this? Well, obviously games limited by the power of lesser hardware, something that would result in games that would not know how to get the most out of the most powerful console, see Project Scarlett. Launch a new generation with less powerful and attractive games than Sony's with its future? PlayStation 5? It seems that this time they have been fast (or attentive) in Microsoft.