The next major addition to the Xbox family is coming next year. Today at E3 in Los Angeles Microsoft officially revealed the long-rumored Project Scorpio, an enhanced version of the Xbox One that's capable of running 4K-native games, and which will also support virtual reality experiences and feature a hefty six teraflops of power. According to Xbox chief Phil Spencer, Microsoft views the new device as much more than a simple refresh.

"It's a dramatic step up for us."

"The important thing for Scorpio is that it's a dramatic step up for us in terms of hardware capability," he told The Verge in an interview last week. "Because as we saw 4K gaming and really high-end VR taking off in the PC space, we wanted to be able to bring that to console. Project Scorpio is actually an Xbox One that can natively run games in 4K and is built with the hardware capabilities to support the high-end VR that you see happening in the PC space today... when it ships it will be the most powerful console ever built."

All models of the Xbox One will be able to play the same library of games, and that includes Scorpio, the original Xbox One, and the just-announced Xbox One S. On Scorpio, though, many of those games will feature improvements because of the more powerful hardware. Spencer cites Halo 5 as an example. While the game is capable of running at 1080p and 60 frames per second on the Xbox One, often the resolution drops in order to maintain a solid framerate. On Scorpio that won't be the case. "When a game like that runs on Scorpio," says Spencer, "it's going to run at maximum resolution the whole time."

As for VR, while previous reports claimed Microsoft was working with Oculus on bringing virtual reality to its home console, the company says it currently doesn't have a partner set — or at least one that it's willing to reveal just yet. "We're not ready to announce something right now, but you can imagine at the price point of Scorpio — which we haven't actually said, but think about consoles and where they live in terms of price point — having something at six teraflops that will get millions of people buying it is very attractive to some of the VR companies that are out there already, and we've architected it such that something will be able to plug right in and work," Spencer says.

It's unusual to announce a game console so early — Project Scorpio is still a codename, after all, and we don't even know what it will look like — and on the surface the reveal appears to be a response to Sony, which already has PlayStation VR launching this year and revealed last week that it was working on a similar upgrade to the PS4. And while that may be part of the reason, Spencer says that the early announcement was also made in an attempt to be more transparent with consumers.

"It's crazy to announce something this early."

"It's crazy to announce something this early," he admits. "But when I put myself in the shoes of our customer, I want to be able to make a choice on what console I want to buy with as much information as possible. We want to give you the information to make that decision. We also want to go talk to the developers that are out there today, that are building games for next holiday, and say here's what you're going to have at your disposal on the console side."

No specific release date has been revealed, but Project Scorpio is expected to launch sometime next fall.

Xbox Design Lab custom controllers