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Two Xbox Consoles Reportedly In The Works For 2020

After a long eight-year hiatus between the release of Xbox 360 and Xbox One, Microsoft seems set on maintaining their current three- to four-year console lifespan, releasing the Xbox One in 2013, then the Xbox One X in 2017.

Come 2020, Xbox users may have to welcome another two new additions to the family. While there has yet to be official word on this, a recent report by Thurrott, who accurately predicted Halo Infinite for E3 2018, suggests that the team is looking to launch a pair of consoles in 2020, with one of them going beyond the traditional design and mechanics.

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Codenamed Scarlett, it appears to be made up of two different pieces of hardware – accompanying the traditional Xbox console is an extra streaming device that’s “designed to work with the company’s upcoming game streaming platform,” and known internally as Scarlett Cloud.

This falls in line with what Xbox head honcho Phil Spencer hinted at during E3 2018, where he revealed that the Xbox One X team was toes-deep in experimenting and building on the next consoles as Microsoft’s “cloud engineers are building a game streaming network to unlock console gaming on any device.”

Should the article turn out to be the truth, it could potentially bring about a new change in how future consoles are designed. The idea is certainly novel, but there are some issues to address, such as the main problem of latency – which means considerations have to be made for gamers with average internet speed. It’s a huge risk, and one of the measures undertaken by the team is to include device-compatible hardware for the local computing of controller input and collision detection.

No specific details about hardware specs have been announced for both consoles, though the streaming one will be “lower-powered” as compared to its more traditional counterpart. Further information and an official announcement are expected either in the days leading up to E3 2019, or during their event showcase itself.