Microsoft certainly set the bar high when they announced Xbox’s Project Scorpio. Announcing it as “the most powerful console of all time” and promising huge improvements for games, many were and still are skeptical. However, according to Phil Spencer, gamers will be quite impressed with the console, and the games that are running on it.
Asked on Twitter whether he thought Xbox Scorpio would “impress a lot of people,” Spencer responded, “The goal is for the games running on Scorpio to impress. I feel good about where we are on that goal.” So a tiny twist on the question there in Spencer’s response.
He’s not saying the console itself will impress people, though that likely is a part of the plan. Instead he’s saying the main goal is for the games that Xbox Scorpio will run to impress people. It’s a small but interesting distinction, and it plays into the direction that Spencer has been taking Xbox ever since he took over.
The initial announcement of the Xbox One was an unmitigated disaster. Focusing on sports and other entertainment mediums, the presentation had a worrying lack of actual games to show. This, along with some questionable design decisions, led to the Xbox One hitting the market in a much worse position than its rival, the PS4.
Eventually Phil Spencer took over the Xbox division, and since then has kept a laser focus on the reason people actually buy an Xbox One: the games. With the launch of Xbox Scorpio it seems that he’s keeping this strategy going, making sure that everyone understands that it’s the games that make people put their money down.
Scorpio promises some big improvements to the games too, so it’s easy to see how it might impress players looking for improved graphics and framerates. We’ll see how it all turns out soon, probably at E3 2017.
