Project Scorpio is the next Xbox One console, arriving late 2017

Sure the Xbox One S was the big news from today’s event, but Microsoft had one major surprise up its sleeve: Project Scorpio. Xbox head Phil Spencer took the stage one final time to announce the “latest addition to the Xbox One family” with a dramatic trailer offering glimpses of what’s to come, courtesy of some extremely excited developers.

The console, which is set for release during the 2017 holiday season will be fully compatible with standard Xbox One games (and, in fact, the company is considering it the third addition to the Xbox One family after the One and One S), but features a big upgrade in processing power aimed specifically at VR gaming.

We’re still in the early stages here, and the video didn’t offer much more than a few flashes of internals, but the company was nice enough to announce a few key specs, including eight CPU cores and six teraflops of GPU power, designed with 4K gaming in mind, referring to it as “the most powerful console ever created.” Microsoft made the big reveal in an attempt to get developers on-board – and, naturally, to add a little bang to today’s E3 kick-off event.