Microsoft reportedly kills low-end next-gen Xbox plans

Back at E3 2018, Microsoft’s Phil Spencer stated that Microsoft has several “consoles” in development, with industry insiders claiming that two new Xbox consoles would be being worked on, Project Lockhart, a lower-cost platform, and Project Scarlett, a higher-end unit which targets higher levels of graphical fidelity. 

According to Brad Sams, an analyst who has made several accurate predictions about the Xbox platform in the past, Microsoft was disappointed by developer reactions to Microsoft’s two-tier approach to next-gen. In effect, their plans for a lower-end Lockhart platform would limit the potential of Scarlett, as developers would target their games for the lower-end console and scale up to Microsoft’s more powerful hardware, just like we already see with Xbox One X. 

As it stands, Microsoft appears to have put its plans for Project Lockhart on hold, which is why Project Scarlett was discussed at E3 as Microsoft’s only next-generation console. While Microsoft could still resume work on Lockhart, it seems more likely that the console maker is more likely to focus on Project Scarlett for high-end gaming and on its cloud-based Xcloud platform to deliver low-cost gaming experiences.  
 
The idea behind Lockhart was simple, make a version of Microsft’s next-generation Xbox with lower hardware specifications. This could be done by giving the console the same CPU as Scarlett while offering less combined memory and a lower-end version of Scarlett’s graphics card. This would allow Microsoft to deliver the same games, given the console’s CPU parity, but offer them at a lower gameplay resolution and with lower resolution textures. Lockhart could deliver a 1080p experience while Scarlett targets 4K.

While this seems like a logical plan for next-generation consoles, it forces developers to create games for two platforms from day-1, creates a lower-end hardware baseline than expected for “next-gen”, forces Microsoft to develop two distinct console SoCs and will ultimately harm the sales of their high-end Scarlett platform.