Next-gen Xbox Scarlett will receive "a huge upgrade in CPU", says Greenberg

Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox Scarlett may introduce SSD and ray-tracing to the console mix, but it’s the CPU upgrade that many fans are interested in.

Moving from the low-powered mobile Jaguar-based technology of the 2013 Xbox One to an all-new AMD Zen 2 SoC, fans should expect a true generational leap between devices. Xbox general manager Aaron Greenberg has now commented on this fact.

Speaking to OXM, Greenberg started that the Scarlett system will see a “huge” CPU improvement over the current console king, the Xbox One X.

“We feel good about what we’ve done with the Xbox One X, and the same team that built that is also building Project Scarlett,” Greenberg told the outlet.

“What we’re seeing today is a huge upgrade in GPU – you can output in 4K, a lot of other benefits, memory structure and so on. For next-gen, I think you’ll see a big upgrade in CPU because we want to make sure you don’t have any compromises with frame rate. Yes we can do 4K, but we can also do frame rates up to 120. I think that type of capability will be something people don’t see today. And then the high-speed instant gaming using solid state drives to enable instant resume, getting into games and being able to play by removing load times and load screens that exist today. That’s going to be a huge change.”

Scarlett’s launch date is unconfirmed, but it’s expected to release in holiday 2020 alongside the release of Halo Infinite. With full backward compatibility with everything playable on Xbox One, it’s certainly going to be a content-filled machine on launch.