Xbox Scorpio price: The head of Xbox says you shouldn’t worry about it

Xbox Scorpio, Microsoft's upcoming system due out next winter, is generating buzz thanks to a promise of being the "most powerful console ever." Does such a guarantee translate to the "most expensive console ever" as well? According to Xbox head Phil Spencer, consumers have nothing to worry about.

"I think you will feel like it's a premium product, a premium console," Spencer told NZ Gamer. "And not something, anything more than that. So I wouldn't get people worried that this thing is going to be unlike any console price you've ever seen. We didn't design it that way."

He also noted that Microsoft designed the recently released Xbox One S and Scorpio "in parallel" and "thought about the price performance of what we wanted to hit with the Scorpio relative to what we were going to be able to do with the S."

With this in mind, Microsoft is hoping to create a "good price continuum, so people wouldn't look at these two things as so disconnected because of the price delta."

That said, Spencer acknowledged that there is a significant cost to equipping the Scorpio with such powerful hardware. "The opening price point for the Xbox One S, and the different hard drive sizes, that is a critical part of this whole product," he explained. "When I think about it as a product line, you should expect the pricing to kind of be in line with that."

Right now, the base Xbox One S console is available for $299.99. The PlayStation 4 Pro — the Scorpio's supposed competitor — will soon hit the market for $399.99.