What you need to know about Microsoft’s new games console, Project Scorpio

Microsoft have made a pretty lofty claim about Project Scorpio, stating it is the most powerful gaming console in history.

Earlier this week they showed off the innards of their new console, and it would appear that they weren't blowing smoke, because the specs are pretty crazy impressive. Clip via DigitalFoundry At the moment, all we've got on the project is a load of numbers, but the numbers do add up to something potentially pretty special. Providing you know what it all means, which if you're anything like us, you probably don't. Before we got the translation from someone much smarter, this was basically us:

Me watching the Project Scorpio specs video and failing to understand most of it pic.twitter.com/QYX8EoTLaW

— Ben Skipper (@bskipper27) 6 April 2017

It has a huge memory upgrade from the Xbox One, it will run at least 31% faster, a cooling system you wouldn't normally see outside of some pretty high-end gaming PCs, but will be holding on to the Xbox One's central hardware, which is obvious call for the backwards compatibility we've been promised. Specific details like cost haven't been discussed, and neither has a proper release date - outside of "Holiday 2017" - but Microsoft are claiming that it will be able to run 1080p games in 4k without the consta-updates that we needed to download when the PS4 Pro came out. The issue of course is that all this high-end graphics stuff will only appeal to those who happen to have big 4k TVs in their home, which isn't exactly a majority. Sony have already tried something similar with the PS4 Pro - which is also 4K ready - and found the audience wasn't exactly ready for the technology jump. Just a month after release, and the PS4 Pro was being outsold by the PS4 on a 5:1 ratio, and by this point the PS4 has already been out for over three years. E3 - the biggest games expo of the year - is taking place from the 14 to 16 of June, so we should expect to see the first look at the games that will push Project Scorpio to its visual limits, so we won't know until then what to fully expect from this graphical beast.