Xbox One Scorpio Won't Make 4K Mandatory, Devs Could Make Performance Better Instead

One of the bigger news stories to come from E3 was the announcement of Microsoft's Project Scorpio, a more powerful Xbox One that can run games at 4K resolution. However, Xbox head Phil Spencer has since said that he won't make it mandatory for every game to run at 4K.

When asked on Twitter if developers can instead go for 1080p with 60 frames per second and "massively upgraded visuals," Spencer replied, "We'll talk more about this later, but we never said we'd mandate 4K frame buffer, we won't."

Spencer spoke about the subject last week on GameSpot sister site Giant Bomb's Live at E3 show, where he said letting developers do what they want is something he supports.

"We'll absolutely be open to that," Spencer said. "I think creative freedom and how you want to use the power of the box is something that I always support. I came from first party, as you guys know, so putting the right tools in the hands of the creators, the best creators, is our job as the platform.

"One thing we should make sure that everyone understands is, every game that comes out in the Xbox One family will run on the original Xbox One, Xbox One S, and Scorpio, so we have had some questions, 'Are there going to be Scorpio-exclusive games?' No, the line of games you're going to get to play is the same."

The fact that every Xbox One game can run on both the current and more powerful hardware suggests a limit as to what developers can do with Project Scorpio's tech. However, this is just conjecture. Spencer says we'll learn more about the upcoming console's specifics in the future.

Spencer has also come out to say that you shouldn't buy Scorpio expecting your current games to run better, though some of them might.

"If you look at a game like Halo 5, [it] implements something called dynamic scaling," Spencer explained. "As scenes get more complex, in order to maintain 60 frames per second, they will actually change the resolution that you're running at, and they're not the only game that does this. So if you run that game on Project Scorpio you're actually going to be at the max frame rate of that game more often."

Additionally, he said that we can expect Microsoft to release its games on Steam again, though he did not say when. In the same interview, he confirmed that Scorpio is four and half times more powerful than the original Xbox One.

He also talked about Microsoft's plan to be transparent, which is why the company was up front about announcing its two consoles at E3.

"I want to talk about Scorpio so customers can feel like they have a view into what we were doing so they could make the decision that is right for them," he said.

For more news and impressions from E3, head on over to GameSpot's event hub here.