First-party Xbox One Scorpio games will run in native 4K says Microsoft

Microsoft's first-party Xbox One games will render natively in 4K on Project Scorpio, claims Microsoft Studios publishing general manager Shannon Loftis. This statement of intent comes following Sony's announcement of the PS4 Pro in early September.

The PS4 Pro, which launches in November, will support native 4K but most games will not be capable. PlayStation president Andrew House told Digital Spy that most PS4 Pro-supporting games will upscale to 4K rather than run natively at that resolution.

In an interview with USA Today, Loftis said: "Any games we're making that we're launching in the Scorpio time frame, we're making sure they can natively render at 4K." She also confirmed that Microsoft is exploring virtual reality support for Xbox games on Scorpio.

Project Scorpio was announced at E3 in June and will be released in late 2017. Like PS4 Pro it will support 4K gaming, but it will be the more powerful machine. While the specs have not been detailed, it is known that Scorpio will have six teraflops of computing power, versus the 4.2 teraflops of PS4 Pro.

Following the PS4 Pro announcement on 7 September, Xbox director Albert Penello said that the differences between the two consoles will be "obvious".

Both Scorpio and PS4 Pro are mid-console cycle hardware upgrades that will offer greater performance and visual fidelity to all future PS4 and Xbox One games, as well as past games that choose to support the devices. All future games will still be playable on the old systems.

With over a year to go before Scorpio's release, this certainly won't be the last we hear from Microsoft when it comes to the likely advantages Scoprio has over its rival. What will determine one's success over the other however, is pricing, and how wise a decision releasing first ends up being for Sony.

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