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[Alpha Phoenix]

I'm not sure why some folks sound paranoid. Haven't Microsoft's first-party titles always been the most impressive on Xbox hardware?

Native 4K first-party games is rather expected on Scropio. I called it a while back.

 

[EventHorizon]

No, you can't start predicting prices of a product that you know nothing about. You don't know the specs, you don't know what comes with the Scorpio. Heck, you don't even know if it even exists right now. Add to that, that launch is over a year away, and the result is, that noone in this forum is qualified to talk about the price. My bet is that not even Microsoft knows what price they'll set.

I know that Microsoft intends for Scorpio to play games at native 4K resolution. That is all that is needed to be known. If I know where you are going, I don't have to know how you will get there to know the minimum distance you have to travel.

HoloLens has absolutely nothing to do with PSVR. They aren't in the same ballpark, and to be honest, I'm surprised that you think HoloLens was created/shown in response to Morpheus.
The PSVR is tied to the Playstation and does one thing - plays games (and other entertainment).
The HoloLens is a stand-alone computer that costs around 10 times as much and is aimed directly at the enterprise. Sure, you can use it for gaming, but claiming that it's meant to eat PSVRs lunch is just nonsense.

If memory serves me, HoloLens was shown at Build first. Not E3. It's not a gaming device, and has nothing to do with the PSVR.

I have no doubt HoloLens wasn't created as a response to PSVR. It was already in the works. It was hastily trotted out as a counter when PSVR started gain traction. Its current enterprise focus has absolutely nothing to do with the games and other entertainment apps that were displayed. The only way to explain that difference between Microsoft's hype and the reality is to say that Microsoft was lying about its intent.

I knew at the time that Hololens was going to be way too expensive, and if I knew then Microsoft had to know too. How did I know? I knew because I knew where they wanted to go, which means I knew the minimum distance they would have to travel. Just. Like. With. Scorpio.

Because sooner or later all you guys have to understand that Scorpio comes out a year LATER than PS4 Pro.

And a performance increase of a factor of 1,4 in one year is very much possible a the same price.

It will be 399 or at maximum 449

Sooner or later all you guys will realize that we can see how fast prices go down over a year.

 

[Rodelero]

MS: "The Xbox One renders games sometimes at 1080p30 and sometimes at 900p60"

GAF: "You suck, that's not enough 'p'!!!"

...

MS: "We're making sure games on the Scorpio render at full 4K."

GAF: "Gosh this pursuit of pixels over IQ is frustrating"

...

MS: **gunshot**

GAF: "Yay, we win!"

Is it hard to imagine that some gamers may want a nice middle ground between performance, graphical effects, and resolution, rather than a console and 4K mandate which very clearly focuses on resolution above all?

The vast majority of people have 1080p screens and wanted a 1080p console. Scorpio doesn't really fit the bill any better than the Xbox One did, does it?

 

[Gestault]

I'm seeing more than a few people presume that having games rendering at 4K means that's the only display option. Which based on a few things would be unlikely. Having hardware capable of it and setting up the display option around that image quality is a good thing for 4K buyers, and doubly so assuming there's options for standard-range displays.

 

[elelunicy]

Where is this weird theories that fps is tied to cpu? I'm running a 7 year old cpu and in the last month I've upgraded to a 1440p monitor and tested some new gpus. My fps has gone through the roof and that's going to 1440p from 1080p. Still same cpu.

The CPU doesn't care what resolution the game is running at (with the exception of some very edgy cases, such as games where LOD is tied to pixel size). Higher framerates, however, would demand the CPU to prepare more frames (push more draw calls, process the AI faster, etc.) and thus increase the CPU workload. If a 30fps game is made while using a console's CPU power to the fullest, then it would not run at 60fps on the same console no matter how low you drop the resolution.

Your exmaple is just a case of not being CPU bound. Playing some CPU heavy games you'll notice your framerate would not go up regardless of how low you drop the resolution.

 

[The Hamburglar]

The CPU doesn't care what resolution the game is running at (with the exception of some very edgy cases, such as games where LOD is tied to pixel size). Higher framerates, however, would demand the CPU to prepare more frames (push more draw calls, process the AI faster, etc.) and thus increase the CPU workload. If a 30fps game is made while using a console's CPU power to the fullest, then it would not run at 60fps on the same console no matter how low you drop the resolution.

Your exmaple is just a case of not being CPU bound. Playing some CPU heavy games you'll notice your framerate would not go up regardless of how low you drop the resolution.

well I did play some cpu bound games. Witcher 3 and GTA5. I was able to crank up the res and gfx options in gta 5 and get a constant 80fps.

Are console games all of a sudden cpu bound ? If a chunk of pc games are GFX card bound (which they are) wouldn't that be the same for consoles.

 

[mike4001_]

Sooner or later all you guys will realize that we can see how fast prices go down over a year.

There isn't any price that has to go down.

This is a new GPU revision which will just launch at the same price als the old one did in 2016 and it will to 6 TF instead of 4,2

 

[LukasTaves]

Is it hard to imagine that some gamers may want a nice middle ground between performance, graphical effects, and resolution, rather than a console and 4K mandate which very clearly focuses on resolution above all?

The vast majority of people have 1080p screens and wanted a 1080p console. Scorpio doesn't really fit the bill any better than the Xbox One did, does it?

It will probably look better than any other console on 1080p, so I dunno what the issue is?

It's not like developers will opt to have 1080p at ultra on neo, and go 4k at low on xbone...

 

[scently]

It will probably look better than any other console on 1080p, so I dunno what the issue is?

It's not like developers will opt to have 1080p at ultra on neo, and go 4k at low on xbone...

Indeed. I think what will happen is, developers will target a particular resolution on PS4P and then render at a higher res on Scorpio and, depending on if it comes with 12gb ram, it will have higher quality textures and maybe higher quality effects here and there. Games that reconstruct from a lower res to 4k will do so this way too or they will both reconstruct from the same res and Scorpio will have more effects turned on or at higher quality. If there is a special 1080p mode on both then they will both benefit from cranking everything up. Essentially what we have on PS4 and XB1.

I think MS first party games coming out this fall, from FH3 onward will be ported to Scorpio at 4k. Given the myriad of settings and such that are on the recent MS first party games on PC of late, its easy to see how these games will be optimised for Scorpio. I do wonder if they will bother with a 1080p mode besides the benefits of super-sampling.

 

[TBiddy]

I know that Microsoft intends for Scorpio to play games at native 4K resolution. That is all that is needed to be known. If I know where you are going, I don't have to know how you will get there to know the minimum distance you have to travel.

But you're missing the key part here. The power difference between XB1 and PS4 was about 40%, give or take. Agreed? The price difference between the XB1 was about 100$ in favor of the PS4. Even if we remove the Kinect from the question, the price would've been about the same, and yet the PS4 was 40% faster.

From what we know right now, the Scorpio seems to be about 40% than the PS4P. It's not far-fetched, at all, that the price will be about the same. Especially considering there's more than a year to launch.

I have no doubt HoloLens wasn't created as a response to PSVR. It was already in the works. It was hastily trotted out as a counter when PSVR started gain traction. Its current enterprise focus has absolutely nothing to do with the games and other entertainment apps that were displayed.The only way to explain that difference between Microsoft's hype and the reality is to say that Microsoft was lying about its intent.

What? That doesn't make sense. They spend a lot of time showing off the scenarios it could be used for in enterprise. They even had a cooperation with NASA. Sure, they showed off a few games, but that was never the focus of HoloLens.

I knew at the time that Hololens was going to be way too expensive, and if I knew then Microsoft had to know too. How did I know? I knew because I knew where they wanted to go, which means I knew the minimum distance they would have to travel. Just. Like. With. Scorpio.

Everyone knew that HoloLens was going to be frigging expensive. It's new tech, comes with a complete computer and doesn't require tethering. It's not rocket science figuring out, that it's going to be expensive. Can't really compare that to Scorpio.

 

[mortal]

I'll believe it when I see it. Also, ALL exclusives should be native 4k, otherwise what's the point of bragging about how much more powerful than the PS4pro it is?

 

[Brad Grenz]

What? That doesn't make sense. They spend a lot of time showing off the scenarios it could be used for in enterprise. They even had a cooperation with NASA. Sure, they showed off a few games, but that was never the focus of HoloLens.

Everyone knew that HoloLens was going to be frigging expensive. It's new tech, comes with a complete computer and doesn't require tethering. It's not rocket science figuring out, that it's going to be expensive. Can't really compare that to Scorpio.

For something that was never focused on games, it sure took up a lot of stage time for MS at E3. And if we want to talk about poor messaging, just think of all the people out there who still don't understand Hololens is not an Xbox accessory, and is instead a self-contained platform priced at several thousand dollars. There was no reason whatsoever to present it the way they did except to create the illusion they had an "answer" for PSVR.

 

[Bitch Pudding]

I'll believe it when I see it. Also, ALL exclusives should be native 4k, otherwise what's the point of bragging about how much more powerful than the PS4pro it is?

About how many "exclusives" are we talking here in the first place? I don't think those will be a problem. But as others said, XBones aren't Halo-Forza-Gears consoles anymore, people also play CoD and / or Battlefield. It will be interesting to see how Scorpio deals with all these 3rd party games.

 

[thomasmahler]

I'll believe it when I see it. Also, ALL exclusives should be native 4k, otherwise what's the point of bragging about how much more powerful than the PS4pro it is?

The point is that most people here don't care about native 4k yet because most people even on GAF don't even have a 4k TV at this point, so everyone is just basically saying: "Hey MS, just make the games look the best they can without just upping the resolution!"... and that's a sensible response. The current generation of consoles wasn't yet powerful enough to easily render all games at full 1080p/60fps, so while now dialing up to render 4x the pixels will make games look a lot sharper, there's a lot more you can do to make a game look BETTER other than just upping the resolution. We'll see tons of examples where a 1080p game will just look objectively better than a lot of the 4k games, simply cause it's not just all about resolution.

What people have to remember though is that TV prices are rapidly falling and Scorpio will only be released in a little more than a year. By then, you'll get good 4k TVs for 1k USD or less and by then a LOT more people will have upgraded, so Microsoft is just preparing for that case. And they're leaving it up to the (third party) developers how they'll want to use the power anyway. I don't think it's super smart to say that 'all First Party Games will render at 4k', since that's just an arbitrary statement to make. If 343 figures out some new tricks to make the next Halo look absolutely stunning, but can only manage to do that at 1080p, why would they make the game look less stunning just to support 4k?

I personally wouldn't expect 4k games on Scorpio to look DRAMATICALLY better than current gen games, simply because rendering at native 4k comes at a HUGE cost and that cost could otherwise be used to make 1080p games look insanely good.

 

[TBiddy]

For something that was never focused on games, it sure took up a lot of stage time for MS at E3. And if we want to talk about poor messaging, just think of all the people out there who still don't understand Hololens is not an Xbox accessory, and is instead a self-contained platform priced at several thousand dollars. There was no reason whatsoever to present it the way they did except to create the illusion they had an "answer" for PSVR.

There are games. It's not the focus though, which is obvious for anyone who has been following the development of HoloLens. I don't know how many people think the HoloLens is an Xbox accessory, but I think it's a very small number. And the number of people who think HoloLens is an answer to PSVR (or was presented as such) is probably even smaller than that.

 

[Panajev2001a]

MS: "The Xbox One renders games sometimes at 1080p30 and sometimes at 900p60"

GAF: "You suck, that's not enough 'p'!!!"

...

MS: "We're making sure games on the Scorpio render at full 4K."

GAF: "Gosh this pursuit of pixels over IQ is frustrating"

...

MS: **gunshot**

GAF: "Yay, we win!"

Matching with Xbox One the target PS3 was trying to reach == just making sure you render at the common user's display resolution... a target Xbox 360 and PS3 were not suited to reach constantly, but their successor could and should.

Slightly different than pursuing 4K by both PS4 Pro and Scorpio... if developers put some work in patches/optimised modes the 1080p users will have a much much better picture quality and scene complexity than 4K users, HDR aside for most if not all 1080p sets unfortunately.

The problem is that I do not see many developers actually bothering to extract the full potential of these machines until you can make titles that do not have to run on current generation consoles too.

 

[Brad Grenz]

There are games. It's not the focus though, which is obvious for anyone who has been following the development of HoloLens. I don't know how many people think the HoloLens is an Xbox accessory, but I think it's a very small number. And the number of people who think HoloLens is an answer to PSVR (or was presented as such) is probably even smaller than that.

Yeah, I don't know how the millions of people who only know about Hololens from seeing it at the annual Xbox Media Briefing could be so very mistaken....

 

[TBiddy]

Yeah, I don't know how the millions of people who only know about Hololens from seeing it at the annual Xbox Media Briefing could be so very mistaken....

So basically, what you're saying is, that you have no idea how many people (if any) thinks that the HoloLens is purely an Xbox accessory. Got ya.

 

[Brad Grenz]

So basically, what you're saying is, that you have no idea how many people (if any) thinks that the HoloLens is purely an Xbox accessory. Got ya.

All I can go on is how frequently it been misidentified as such by industry professionals in podcasts over the last three years. But if you're claiming to have statistical data...

 

[TBiddy]

All I can go on is how frequently it been misidentified as such by industry professionals in podcasts over the last three years. But if you're claiming to have statistical data...

How frequently is that? I assume you know? I'm claiming that it's pretty obvious for just about everyone that HoloLens is a very expensive stand-alone product, that has absolutely nothing to do with PSVR.

PS. As far as I remember, HoloLens was introduced in January 2015, so I'm not sure what they've been talking about the last three years?

 

[Walshicus]

All I can go on is how frequently it been misidentified as such by industry professionals in podcasts over the last three years. But if you're claiming to have statistical data...

Again, given how much the focus has been on enterprise functionality since launch...

Not to say there aren't obvious gaming applications, but you could say the same about a mouse or a new display.

 

[Bitch Pudding]

And the number of people who think HoloLens is an answer to PSVR (or was presented as such) is probably even smaller than that.

HoloLens' 1st gen ist supposed to be used as a corporate / non-gaming device. We all know that. Yet, it was presented during E3 games conference in 2015 using MineCraft. Whoever thinks that was a coincidence cannot be helped.

 

[YoshiMax]

Is it hard to imagine that some gamers may want a nice middle ground between performance, graphical effects, and resolution, rather than a console and 4K mandate which very clearly focuses on resolution above all?

The vast majority of people have 1080p screens and wanted a 1080p console. Scorpio doesn't really fit the bill any better than the Xbox One did, does it?

Where does PS4Pro sit in your unbiased opinion?

 

[TBiddy]

HoloLens' 1st gen ist supposed to be used as a corporate / non-gaming device. We all know that. Yet, it was presented during E3 games conference in 2015 using MineCraft. Whoever thinks that was a coincidence cannot be helped.

Of course it wasn't a coincidence. It's not like it stumbled on the floor by it self. Microsoft had a new awesome device, they wanted to show new sides of. Remember, it had been presented 6 months earlier by showing, amongst a lot of other stuff, Minecraft at Build 2015.

It was never meant as something to combat PSVR, and it has never been presented as such.

 

[MilkyJoe]

Is it hard to imagine that some gamers may want a nice middle ground between performance, graphical effects, and resolution, rather than a console and 4K mandate which very clearly focuses on resolution above all?

The vast majority of people have 1080p screens and wanted a 1080p console. Scorpio doesn't really fit the bill any better than the Xbox One did, does it?

Did you not get the memo?

@ThatDudeizEric We'll talk more about this later but we never said we'd mandate 4K framebuffer, we won't.
— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) June 20, 2016

No one is stupid enough to put out only 4K content in a world of 1080 screens

 

[phil_t98]

Is it hard to imagine that some gamers may want a nice middle ground between performance, graphical effects, and resolution, rather than a console and 4K mandate which very clearly focuses on resolution above all?

The vast majority of people have 1080p screens and wanted a 1080p console. Scorpio doesn't really fit the bill any better than the Xbox One did, does it?

but the scorpio will do 1080p as well with better capability then the currant xbox

 

[Chris_Rivera]

I can just smell those uncompressed pixels now...

Hopefully chasing native 4K doesn't bite them in the butt when it comes to differentiating their titles. I can imagine Scorpio running games with the same graphical complexity that the PS4 Pro can only render at 1080p at 1440p upscaled to 4K.

Quantum Break PC Native?

 

[eso76]

Yeah, I can see Scorpio titles ultimately perform and look worse than Ps4Pro titles when played on your TV at typical viewing distance, if they're going for native 4k.

Oh, but 100% crops posted on forums will certainly look sharper and people who bought a new TV will be proud of their purchase being able to count individual pixels.

 

[fast_taker]

fingers crossed they will support 1080p/60fps as well which is a much more needed feature than 4K in my opinion.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

The point is that most people here don't care about native 4k yet because most people even on GAF don't even have a 4k TV at this point, so everyone is just basically saying: "Hey MS, just make the games look the best they can without just upping the resolution!"... and that's a sensible response. The current generation of consoles wasn't yet powerful enough to easily render all games at full 1080p/60fps, so while now dialing up to render 4x the pixels will make games look a lot sharper, there's a lot more you can do to make a game look BETTER other than just upping the resolution. We'll see tons of examples where a 1080p game will just look objectively better than a lot of the 4k games, simply cause it's not just all about resolution.

What people have to remember though is that TV prices are rapidly falling and Scorpio will only be released in a little more than a year. By then, you'll get good 4k TVs for 1k USD or less and by then a LOT more people will have upgraded, so Microsoft is just preparing for that case. And they're leaving it up to the (third party) developers how they'll want to use the power anyway. I don't think it's super smart to say that 'all First Party Games will render at 4k', since that's just an arbitrary statement to make. If 343 figures out some new tricks to make the next Halo look absolutely stunning, but can only manage to do that at 1080p, why would they make the game look less stunning just to support 4k?

I personally wouldn't expect 4k games on Scorpio to look DRAMATICALLY better than current gen games, simply because rendering at native 4k comes at a HUGE cost and that cost could otherwise be used to make 1080p games look insanely good.

Not only this, wouldn't a 1080/60 games with full AA and shit tonnes of effects still upscale amazingly on a 4K TV anyway?

 

[theindieboy]

Personally think this is a stupid statement to make, because will be thrown back in their face if one or more titles arn't. Also think it is a dumb thing to insist that all games render in 4K natively even if it has lots more power than needed to output 4K games, Devs might think it is better to render at 60fps with loads of affects at half the res and be upscaled suits there games better, also saying this far out the games are no where near to being in a dev state to know what they can do. Would be silly to have a shooter outputting at 4K native but running at 20-30fps because of affects or ai's or player count etc imo should have said likely jsut to give themselves some room or most. Anyway thats what i think, to be clear not saying if the scorpio can or can't render 4k native etc just that devs might want to use the power in a different way to suit the game making a blanket statement a year out seems silly.

 

[LeonDekoda]

Just wanna throw my 2cents into the ring here.

Full disclosure, i'm getting a PS4Pro despite not having a 4K TV. I'm looking for that extra performance boost in other titles I own and ones coming out down the line. Games like FF15 might need that boost, Horizon too, and whatever else might come out in the next few years. So yeah, jump down my throat if you will, but i'm going for whatever performance boost I can get.

As for Scorpio, I can honestly see MS make a few backtracks on its 6TFLOPS claim.

First of all, lets take a look at this graph. Source is Wikipedia

Now, if we assume MS is basing Scorpio on the Jaguar Architecture (to preserve compatibility with older software) we have to assume atm that the Scorpio spec will be close to or slightly over PS4Pro.

The GPU in the pro is approx 2.27% faster than the vanilla PS4. With the manufacturing process getting cheaper, they could squeeze in the extra juice. Maybe some overclocking is present too, but unsure.

For Scorpio to hit that magic 6, it would need to have a boost of 4.6%, which I assume will be a mix of a new model and some really hardcore on-console overclocking to achieve. And that's a bold statement, given the closest thing to 6TFLOPS on PC is a GeForce 1070, which retails for $460!

There is also the boost in RAM performance that Scorpio is claiming to have. PS4Pro has the same amount of Ram, but overclock by 1.24%. Not a terrible increase, but enough to squeeze that extra bit of response out of the machine. If MS plans to get to 320Gps performance out of it's RAM, it will either be doing 2 things.

1: Keep the 8GB but switch to GDD5 and overclock to hell.
2: Upgrade the 8GB DDR3 to 12GB GDDR5 and Overclock like hell to get the performance up.

Not that adding more RAM will increase overall performance, but it does provide more room for developers to add better textures and detailed scripting to their games. Not alot more, but a definite boost. But that too will come at extra cost to the consumer.

I'll brush over CPU just quickly, as PS4Pro bumped the CPU from 1.6 to 2.2ghz, keeping the cores the same. Unsure if the new architecture will make processing pipelines a bit more efficient, but overclocking does help somewhat. I can see MS matching that, or going to maybe the 2.4 mark. Who knows.

Honestly, I can see Scorpio being the more powerful machine. But the trade off in performance will be overall cost to the consumer. If MS honestly tries to reach the 6TFLOP mark and make a 1TB HDD as standard, I can realistically see the machine costing around $599! perhaps even more.

PS4Pro isn't the most powerful machine on the market, and they have been very clear that the Pro provides "Up-to" 4K, and other devs have said they will be using up-scaling to get to 4K. PS4Pro provides the consumer with a happy medium between power and visual quality. Also PS4Pro doesn't need to be that much more powerful than vanilla PS4, because the machine is still blisteringly fast as it is. It is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition in most, if not all aspects.

But MS seem to be going for an approach that makes them look desperate.

They need to be ahead of everyone.
They are willing to make a loss to be ahead.
And they don't care who get's in their way, developer or consumer. They just need to be the best in the market!

I would honestly say that MS needs to rethink Scorpio as no Average Joe will be willing to fork out $599 midway through a generation. If they drop the overall FLOPS to around 4.5/4.9, you can still retail the machine for around $399/$450 and still have the most powerful machine on the market.

In the end, if MS choose this selfish route of performance over value, it will be like the Xbone and PS3 launch all over again.

It may be the most powerful system, but how many consumers are they willing to alienate with their pursuit of dominance?

 

[cheezcake]

Just wanna throw my 2cents into the ring here.

Full disclosure, i'm getting a PS4Pro despite not having a 4K TV. I'm looking for that extra performance boost in other titles I own and ones coming out down the line. Games like FF15 might need that boost, Horizon too, and whatever else might come out in the next few years. So yeah, jump down my throat if you will, but i'm going for whatever performance boost I can get.

As for Scorpio, I can honestly see MS make a few backtracks on its 6TFLOPS claim.

First of all, lets take a look at this graph. Source is Wikipedia

Now, if we assume MS is basing Scorpio on the Jaguar Architecture (to preserve compatibility with older software) we have to assume atm that the Scorpio spec will be close to or slightly over PS4Pro.

The GPU in the pro is approx 2.27% faster than the vanilla PS4. With the manufacturing process getting cheaper, they could squeeze in the extra juice. Maybe some overclocking is present too, but unsure.

For Scorpio to hit that magic 6, it would need to have a boost of 4.6%, which I assume will be a mix of a new model and some really hardcore on-console overclocking to achieve. And that's a bold statement, given the closest thing to 6TFLOPS on PC is a GeForce 1070, which retails for $460!

There is also the boost in RAM performance that Scorpio is claiming to have. PS4Pro has the same amount of Ram, but overclock by 1.24%. Not a terrible increase, but enough to squeeze that extra bit of response out of the machine. If MS plans to get to 320Gps performance out of it's RAM, it will either be doing 2 things.

1: Keep the 8GB but switch to GDD5 and overclock to hell.
2: Upgrade the 8GB DDR3 to 12GB GDDR5 and Overclock like hell to get the performance up.

Not that adding more RAM will increase overall performance, but it does provide more room for developers to add better textures and detailed scripting to their games. Not alot more, but a definite boost. But that too will come at extra cost to the consumer.

I'll brush over CPU just quickly, as PS4Pro bumped the CPU from 1.6 to 2.2ghz, keeping the cores the same. Unsure if the new architecture will make processing pipelines a bit more efficient, but overclocking does help somewhat. I can see MS matching that, or going to maybe the 2.4 mark. Who knows.

Honestly, I can see Scorpio being the more powerful machine. But the trade off in performance will be overall cost to the consumer. If MS honestly tries to reach the 6TFLOP mark and make a 1TB HDD as standard, I can realistically see the machine costing around $599! perhaps even more.

PS4Pro isn't the most powerful machine on the market, and they have been very clear that the Pro provides "Up-to" 4K, and other devs have said they will be using up-scaling to get to 4K. PS4Pro provides the consumer with a happy medium between power and visual quality. Also PS4Pro doesn't need to be that much more powerful than vanilla PS4, because the machine is still blisteringly fast as it is. It is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition in most, if not all aspects.

But MS seem to be going for an approach that makes them look desperate.

They need to be ahead of everyone.
They are willing to make a loss to be ahead.
And they don't care who get's in their way, developer or consumer. They just need to be the best in the market!

I would honestly say that MS needs to rethink Scorpio as no Average Joe will be willing to fork out $599 midway through a generation. If they drop the overall FLOPS to around 4.5/4.9, you can still retail the machine for around $399/$450 and still have the most powerful machine on the market.

In the end, if MS choose this selfish route of performance over value, it will be like the Xbone and PS3 launch all over again.

It may be the most powerful system, but how many consumers are they willing to alienate with their pursuit of dominance?

Few things

1) 1070 is far more powerful than the Scorpio will be. NVIDIA cards get more perf per flop than AMD cards, and Scorpio is using an AMD chip. The actual closest thing to the Scorpio is an RX 480 (5.9 Tflops, AMD) and has an RRP of $230.

2) 320 Gbps isn't actually a particularly difficult target to hit with modern hardware, doable with GDDR5 and is actually quite slow if they move to GDDR5X.

Dunno anything about the cpu in the scoprio so wont talk about it. I think the PS4 pro got quite jipped by only being able to boost existing components so there's no chance compatibility with PS4 games got broken. Scorpio might get away with changes in architecture without breaking compatibility because that seems to be the whole point of the UWP initiative, though that's conjecture on my part. I think $499 is quite possible but I severely doubt it'll cost $599 for a console which effectively has a sub $200 equivalent GPU (by 2017) and the weak CPU's typically found in consoles.

 

[Sydle]

What? That doesn't make sense. They spend a lot of time showing off the scenarios it could be used for in enterprise. They even had a cooperation with NASA. Sure, they showed off a few games, but that was never the focus of HoloLens.

It actually started out in the Xbox division under Kudo Tsunoda and they had built 5 or 6 internal teams (remember SOTA, [FUN]CTION, Leap Experience Pioneers (LXP), etc.) to make games and apps for it. When Nadella took over in Q1 2014 he switched it to a productivity device.

Any way, I don't think it's a bad thing to have demos illustrating a range of experiences possible on the device to generate interests. The technology will shrink and become cheaper to produce, so it stands to reason it will be a consumer device some day in the far future.

 

[TBiddy]

The GPU in the pro is approx 2.27% faster than the vanilla PS4.

What? I don't even. How did you arrive at this number?

It actually started out in the Xbox division under Kudo Tsunoda and they had built 5 or 6 internal teams (remember SOTA, [FUN]CTION, Leap Experience Pioneers (LXP), etc.) to make games and apps for it. When Nadella took over in Q1 2014 he switched it to a productivity device.

That's true. I doubt, though, it was ever meant to really roll out as a true Xbox accessory, destined to compete with PSVR.

 

[RichiRamjag]

lol... MS has had the best selling console in NA for the last 2 months.

Is Sony hamstringing themselves with their Slim and PS4 Pro? Are you buying either?

The Scorpio coming next year gives the One S a bit of breathing room, and if you want UHD Blu-ray then there's only one option.

They did actually, which was probably a part (not saying it's the sole reason)of the reason why MS had the best-selling console. Rather than buy my son a PS4, I waited for the announcement and informed my sister to do the same when considering a PS4 for my nephews bday. I don't think these items butcher sales, but they certainly had an effect. Had I not been able to pull a "slickdeal" on wal-mart's Xbox bundle (got a one S for around $200) in addition to selling my OG, I would have waited for Scorpio.

 

[jelly]

At Microsoft we planned to build a 6TF machine but in the end we did better....

Would love that at the reveal event.

 

[LeonDekoda]

1) 1070 is far more powerful than the Scorpio will be. NVIDIA cards get more perf per flop than AMD cards, and Scorpio is using an AMD chip. The actual closest thing to the Scorpio is an RX 480 (5.9 Tflops, AMD) and has an RRP of $230.

That's true, but I was just going for a quick comparison. The thing is, a console GPU needs to cost much much less that that. Your basic Xbox innards might only be about $120-$150, but they charge $250 to make profit on it.

So, if MS threw in a $230 GPU in a console, plus other chips, plus manufacturing, cost per console will be in the $400 mark. So MS would need to charge $599 to make money on it. Not alot of money however.

Are MS dumb enough to put a retail GPU in a console? Probably, but cost wise its very unrealistic.

2) 320 Gbps isn't actually a particularly difficult target to hit with modern hardware, doable with GDDR5 and is actually quite slow if they move to GDDR5X.

Again, it's the argument of Cost. GDDR5X is relatively new, and was at the PS4 launch. Sony (probably) took a hit on the GDDR5 per console, but it was worth it. MS stuck with the slower and more polite DDR3, which was about half the cost. I'm not sure of how much GDDR5X RAM would cost, but for a console, you need to watch your cost.

Realistically, it'll be GDDR5. And it will be "up-to" 320gb's of bandwidth.

 

[TakeItSlowDude]

Just wanna throw my 2cents into the ring here.

Full disclosure, i'm getting a PS4Pro despite not having a 4K TV. I'm looking for that extra performance boost in other titles I own and ones coming out down the line. Games like FF15 might need that boost, Horizon too, and whatever else might come out in the next few years. So yeah, jump down my throat if you will, but i'm going for whatever performance boost I can get.

As for Scorpio, I can honestly see MS make a few backtracks on its 6TFLOPS claim.

First of all, lets take a look at this graph. Source is Wikipedia

Now, if we assume MS is basing Scorpio on the Jaguar Architecture (to preserve compatibility with older software) we have to assume atm that the Scorpio spec will be close to or slightly over PS4Pro.

The GPU in the pro is approx 2.27% faster than the vanilla PS4. With the manufacturing process getting cheaper, they could squeeze in the extra juice. Maybe some overclocking is present too, but unsure.

For Scorpio to hit that magic 6, it would need to have a boost of 4.6%, which I assume will be a mix of a new model and some really hardcore on-console overclocking to achieve. And that's a bold statement, given the closest thing to 6TFLOPS on PC is a GeForce 1070, which retails for $460!

There is also the boost in RAM performance that Scorpio is claiming to have. PS4Pro has the same amount of Ram, but overclock by 1.24%. Not a terrible increase, but enough to squeeze that extra bit of response out of the machine. If MS plans to get to 320Gps performance out of it's RAM, it will either be doing 2 things.

1: Keep the 8GB but switch to GDD5 and overclock to hell.
2: Upgrade the 8GB DDR3 to 12GB GDDR5 and Overclock like hell to get the performance up.

Not that adding more RAM will increase overall performance, but it does provide more room for developers to add better textures and detailed scripting to their games. Not alot more, but a definite boost. But that too will come at extra cost to the consumer.

I'll brush over CPU just quickly, as PS4Pro bumped the CPU from 1.6 to 2.2ghz, keeping the cores the same. Unsure if the new architecture will make processing pipelines a bit more efficient, but overclocking does help somewhat. I can see MS matching that, or going to maybe the 2.4 mark. Who knows.

Honestly, I can see Scorpio being the more powerful machine. But the trade off in performance will be overall cost to the consumer. If MS honestly tries to reach the 6TFLOP mark and make a 1TB HDD as standard, I can realistically see the machine costing around $599! perhaps even more.

PS4Pro isn't the most powerful machine on the market, and they have been very clear that the Pro provides "Up-to" 4K, and other devs have said they will be using up-scaling to get to 4K. PS4Pro provides the consumer with a happy medium between power and visual quality. Also PS4Pro doesn't need to be that much more powerful than vanilla PS4, because the machine is still blisteringly fast as it is. It is leaps and bounds ahead of the competition in most, if not all aspects.

But MS seem to be going for an approach that makes them look desperate.

They need to be ahead of everyone.
They are willing to make a loss to be ahead.
And they don't care who get's in their way, developer or consumer. They just need to be the best in the market!

I would honestly say that MS needs to rethink Scorpio as no Average Joe will be willing to fork out $599 midway through a generation. If they drop the overall FLOPS to around 4.5/4.9, you can still retail the machine for around $399/$450 and still have the most powerful machine on the market.

In the end, if MS choose this selfish route of performance over value, it will be like the Xbone and PS3 launch all over again.

It may be the most powerful system, but how many consumers are they willing to alienate with their pursuit of dominance?

They are dumping the esram with Scorpio. Had the Xbox One not used die space on esram and instead used that space for compute units it would have likely had over 2TF of performance (rough estimate by using the PS4 as a baseline: 853MHz/800MHz * 363mm/348mm * 1.84TF ~=2TF). You need to rethink that 4.6x boost, closer to a 3x boost over the Xbone if one considers the die space used on esram. With respect to memory bandwidth MS is likely going to use a 384bit bus with the same speed GDDR5 as the PS4 pro (actually given the 1.5x bus width it can be slightly slower than 1.7GHz to hit 320GB/s). The CPU is the biggest unknown, an upclocked Jaguar will be a massive disappointment (Zen seems unlikely, but I want to believe). The other big unknown is what architecture improvements the Scorpio GPU will have. Also comparing the retail price of a 1070 to a console makes no sense given the different market expectations (Nvidia has no incentive to sell close to cost or even at a competitive price given AMD's offerings).

 

[keltickennedy]

Sure they will MS.....The good thing is if more devs are pushing for 4k and Xbox keeps the Play Anywhere thing with xbox and windows 10. All these upcoming games will run great at 1080p/60fps+ on my PC.

 

[spookyfish]

At 15 fps.

Pretty much my thoughts as well.

I'm in the "just make it 60 FPS when applicable, please" camp.

 

[cheezcake]

That's true, but I was just going for a quick comparison. The thing is, a console GPU needs to cost much much less that that. Your basic Xbox innards might only be about $120-$150, but they charge $250 to make profit on it.

So, if MS threw in a $230 GPU in a console, plus other chips, plus manufacturing, cost per console will be in the $400 mark. So MS would need to charge $599 to make money on it. Not alot of money however.

Are MS dumb enough to put a retail GPU in a console? Probably, but cost wise its very unrealistic.

Consoles don't have profit on them, or if they do its tiny. This is well documented. Xb1s cost estimate is approx $324, not $120-150. Money is made through software. Also what do you mean "dumb enough to put in a retail GPU", of course not they'll use a mildly customised chip and put it on their own silicon like every other console. PC gpus are a decent indicator for what you can put in a console for a price point. In 2013 (PS4 launch year), a GPU extremely similar to the power of a PS4 ran you $180. I see no reason why towards mid 2017 we won't see the RX 480 equivalent fall from $230 to $180ish.

Again, it's the argument of Cost. GDDR5X is relatively new, and was at the PS4 launch. Sony (probably) took a hit on the GDDR5 per console, but it was worth it. MS stuck with the slower and more polite DDR3, which was about half the cost. I'm not sure of how much GDDR5X RAM would cost, but for a console, you need to watch your cost.

Realistically, it'll be GDDR5. And it will be "up-to" 320gb's of bandwidth.

That $230 RX 480 comes with 8GB of 256 GB/s GDDR5. Memory is cheap. And we already have cards that operate quite a chunk above 320 GB/s mem bandwidth.

 

[Syrus]

I need a tissue

 

[VincentMatts]

You know it got me thinking, what big games will be out for the scorpio launch? Seems too early for halo6 and halo wars in out in February. What halo game we getting in holiday 2017?

 

[dragonelite]

You know it got me thinking, what big games will be out for the scorpio launch? Seems too early for halo6 and halo wars in out in February. What halo game we getting in holiday 2017?

Just in time for Forza 7 and Halo 6, in glorious 4k@60fps.
Those two ip should sell scorpio.

 

[VincentMatts]

Just in time for Forza 7 and Halo 6, in glorious 4k@60fps.
Those two ip should sell scorpio.

Halo5 just came out last year and took 3 years to make, id be stunned if they could push halo6 out in 2 years.

 

[rothbart]

Is it hard to imagine that some gamers may want a nice middle ground between performance, graphical effects, and resolution, rather than a console and 4K mandate which very clearly focuses on resolution above all?

I think most people are rather realistic about MS being able to pull off what they're claiming AND not have it come in at a ridiculous price or SOME gotcha that'll taint what they deliver...

 

[Dabanton]

You know it got me thinking, what big games will be out for the scorpio launch? Seems too early for halo6 and halo wars in out in February. What halo game we getting in holiday 2017?

I'd say Crackdown will probably be there. Also isn't it Halo 3's Anniversary next year? A Halo 3 '4K' remake would be most welcome.

 

[cakely]

1. I believe Microsoft can reach native 4k with Xbox One Scorpio titles. Why not? This is a completely reachable goal for 1st-party games. Forza did it 1080p/60fps as a launch title on the Xbox One.
   
2. I believe that the Scorpio will be $399 at at launch, and I think it will be a pretty big mistake if it sells for more than that. They have a year to bring the hardware prices down.

 

[VincentMatts]

I'd say Crackdown will probably be there. Also isn't it Halo 3's Anniversary next year? A Halo 3 '4K' remake would be most welcome.

Considering we got it recently in MCC and its MP gun play really hasn't aged well, id be pretty meh to be honest.

1. I believe Microsoft can reach native 4k with Xbox One Scorpio titles. Why not? This is a completely reachable goal for 1st-party games. Forza did it 1080p/60fps as a launch title on the Xbox One.
   
2. I believe that the Scorpio will be $399 at at launch, and I think it will be a pretty big mistake if it sells for more than that. They have a year to bring the hardware prices down.

As long as they do a la tomb raider and give options for us to choose something other than native 4k. Id be down with that.