E3 2019: 20 Huge Video Game Announcements You Need To Know

11. Project Scarlett Has An SSD, Will Support 8K/120 FPS, Releasing Holiday 2020

Microsoft concluded their show by revealing the first concrete information about their next-gen games console, Project Scarlett. Though they went into decidedly less detail than many were expecting, we nevertheless learned a number of crucial technical details.

First and foremost, Scarlett will rock a solid-state drive (SSD), allowing far faster loading times than a conventional hard disk drive (HDD), as will likely become an industry standard for consoles from this point.

Furthermore, Scarlett's custom-designed Zen 2 processor from AMD can deliver up to four-times the power of the Xbox One X, and the system will support up to 8K resolution with the potential of 120 frames per second, while utilising cutting-edge ray tracing technology.

Of course this doesn't mean a huge amount to the lay-person, especially without any actual games to show off, but it nevertheless demonstrates that Microsoft is coming out swinging hard against Sony.

Microsoft later confirmed across E3 weekend that they are planning to make Scarlett fully backwards compatible with every prior generation of Xbox game, continuing the consumer-friendly initiative they launched on the Xbox One.

And better still, Scarlett will be compatible with some current Xbox One hardware, meaning you shouldn't need to splash out for costly additional controllers unless you really want to.

And because it apparently needed to be said, Xbox head Phil Spencer also confirmed that Scarlett will indeed have an optical disc drive.