Microsoft unlocks more RAM on Scorpio for developers
The hardware comes with 12GB of RAM, and now 9GB will be made available for games
The spotlight will be shining brightly on Microsoft's Project Scorpio at E3 next week, starting with the company's media briefing on Sunday, June 11 at 2PM Pacific time. Now, ahead of that conference, Xbox corporate VP Mike Ybarra has revealed via Twitter that game developers will actually have one more additional gigabyte of RAM to work with when building games for the powerful console.
"We'll keep tuning Scorpio to empower creators to share the best versions of their games. Unlocked extra GB of RAM for them, now 9GB of GDDR5," Ybarra stated on Twitter.
According to the official Scorpio reveal on Gamer Network's Digital Foundry, "Scorpio does indeed feature 12GB of memory, as indicated on Microsoft's E3 motherboard render, 8GB of which is available to developers, with 4GB reserved for the system. That's an additional 1GB of reservation compared to Xbox One, required in order to run the dashboard at native 4K."
So, as it turns out, Microsoft engineers must have figured out how to manage system resources, including native 4K, with just 3GB of RAM reserved. Game developers will no doubt be very pleased to have the additional RAM to work with, although so far as we know, there are no games that are 100% exclusive to Scorpio - they must be playable on Xbox systems in general with visual enhancements being unlocked when played on a Scorpio.
We'll no doubt see numerous games showcasing Scorpio's graphical prowess on Sunday. GamesIndustry.biz will be at E3 all-week long to bring you the latest news.