Elite
unitthe hard drive inside an Xbox One.
In practical terms, it means Scarlett
games should boot up almost
instantly, hopefully killing the lengthy
load times that still blight many
current-gen titles.State of play
Imagine an open world where every
area is instantly accessible without
having to sit through an initial
60-second load screen, a la Red Dead
Redemption II. With Scarlett, that
could be the new reality. The new
console will also make use of virtual
RAM, leading to a performance boost
over 40 times that of Xbox One S when
combined with this new kind of SSD.
In essence, Scarlett could all but kill
loading times.
Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game
Studios, elaborated on the impact
this super speedy memory could have
on next-gen titles, explaining that
you can make RAM faster either by
speeding up the way you access it, or
by adding more access points. “What
are all the things right now which take
you out of a game? You’re playing then
suddenly ‘bloop’, a load screen pops
up...” Booty told Eurogamer. “Our goal
is to get rid of those things, that’s
what we’re after.”Scarlett takes
Xbox to the
next level
Microsoft’s next-gen machine offers 8K gaming,
faster load time new streaming possibilitie
and launches with Halo Infinite
STREAM IT
FROM THE
OOFTOPSThe future of Xbox is rapidly galloping
towards us... we just don’t know
what it’s called quite yet. Microsoft
played it relatively coy at this year’s
E3, promising its next console – still
codenamed Project Scarlett – will
launch with Halo Infinite around
‘holiday 2020’. And that was about
your lot. Alright, so we know the
successor to Xbox One will be insanely
powerful and support 8K gaming and
ray tracing, yet beyond that Scarlett is
still shrouded in a fair bit of mystery.
Clearly, this new box is still at the
project stage, because Microsoft still
hasn’t given it an official moniker.
While we await the arrival of Xbox
Two/Xbox 720/whatever the next-
gen machine ends up being named,
we at least have some stone cold
facts we weren’t privy to last month.
The headlines? Scarlett supports 8K
gaming up to a blistering 120fps, it
comes with an SSD installed for faster
loading times, and it’s allegedly four
times more powerful than Xbox One X.
For those of us that still play our
consoles on 1080p TVs, the addition
of a new type of solid-state drive
may actually prove to be Scarlett’s
true killer feature. Far faster than
traditional HDDs, SSDs can read and
process data a lot more quickly thanThe best just got that
bit better. The original
Xbox Elite controller is
already the greatest
peripheral of all time
- we’ll hear no
arguments – but its
time at the top of the
pad pile is coming to
an end. Launching on
4 November, the Xbox
Elite Wireless
Controller Series 2 will
cost around £160,
and boasts a number
of revisions, including
a wrap-around rubber
grip, shorter hair-lock
triggers and
adjustable-tension
thumbsticks.
PROJECT SCARLETT INSIDER
THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE 009