Microsoft's Xbox head Phil Spencer revealed in an E3 2016 interview that the company seriously considered launching a new Xbox One with upgraded hardware this year, but decided against it.
The company is launching a smaller version of the console, the Xbox One S, this year that can handle 4K movie discs and video streaming. However, as Eurogamer found out when it spoke with Spencer, we almost got a gaming-themed Xbox One hardware upgrade this year:
We could have done a new update this year. We actually looked at it. We went all the way to, we had the spec in front of us, should we ship something that's less than Scorpio this year, but in truth you can't do a true 4K console this year. And I just didn't think anything between what is effectively a 1080p console and the 4K console, like, from a consumer television standpoint there's nothing in the middle. So let's go focus on 4K and next year was the right year to do that.
As he stated, that upgrade plan was scrapped in favor of "Project Scorpio", which will launch at the end of 2017. It will have higher end hardware to support games in 4K resolution, while also supporting all the older Xbox One games and accessories that were previously released, along with all backwards compatible Xbox 360 games.