In an exclusive interview with Gamespot, Phil Spencer, the Head of Xbox shared more details on what the focus of Project Scarlett will be. Spencer said: “I think the area that we really want to focus on next-generation is frame rate and playability of the games, ensuring that the games load incredibly fast, ensuring that the game is running at the highest frame rate possible. We’re also the Windows company, so we see the work that goes on for PC and the work the developers are doing. People love 60 frames-per-second games, so getting games to run at 4K 60 FPS I think will be a real design goal for us.”
In talking about what’s next for the next generation of gaming, Phil Spencer looked back on what Xbox focused on this generation. “The thing that’s interesting is, this generation, we’ve really focused on 4K visuals and how we bring both movies through 4K Blu-ray and video streaming, and with Xbox One X allowing games to run at 4K visuals will make really strong visual enhancements next generation.” He did stress that while the visual fidelity will always be a focus, the next generation will be focused on how games play. Spencer said: “But playability is probably the bigger focus for us this generation. How fast do games load? Do I feel like I can get into the game as fast as possible and while it’s playing? How does it feel? Does this game both look and feel like no other game that I’ve seen? That’s our target.”
Phil Spencer also talked about the success of backwards compatibility and how they still want to continue that initiative moving forward next generation. “We really like the reception and the use that we’ve seen through the Xbox One backwards compatibility program. Making sure that all four generations of content–so the original Xbox games that run on your Xbox One today, the OG Xbox; the 360 games that run on your Xbox One; your Xbox One games; and the new generation games–all run on the next platform is important to us. We want to respect the games that you’ve bought from us. We want to make sure that the generations can play with each other, so if you happen to adopt the next generation early and somebody stays back, that if their games are on both platforms, you’ll be able to cross-gen play.”
Phil Spencer wants to keep the same commitment to the compatibility of games to controllers also. “Another thing that will be a little new for us is the fact that we want to also respect the compatibility of the controllers that you already have. This generation, we came out with the Elite controller, we’ve done work on controllers and people have invested in personalized controllers, the things that they love and we want to make those compatible with future generations of our console as well. So really, the things that you’ve bought from us, whether the games or the controllers that you’re using, we want to make sure those are future compatible with the highest fidelity version of our console, which at that time will obviously be the one we’ve just launched.” At E3 2019, Xbox announced that Project Scarlett will be releasing Holiday 2020 with Halo: Infinite as a launch title.