Polygon: Xbox Scorpio will be a ~6 TFLOP system (v PS4K's 4.14), unveil soon, Fall 17

It's possible that we'll see the PS4 Neo occupy the middle ground while the PS4/Xbox Slim occupy the low end, and the Xbox Scorpio occupies the high end (higher end hardware, higher price).

There's no rule that these consoles have to be the same price and similar hardware profiles.

What'll be even better is when the games do not look like an accurate representation of the on paper power.
 
It's possible that we'll see the PS4 Neo occupy the middle ground while the PS4/Xbox Slim occupy the low end, and the Xbox Scorpio occupies the high end (higher end hardware, higher price).

How is higher end hardware at higher price beneficial to Microsoft if people who buy high end systems can buy MS exclusives on their PC? So either not all MS exclusives are going to end up on PC, or high end console at higher price is incredibly redundant.
 
How is higher end hardware at higher price beneficial to Microsoft if people who buy high end systems can buy MS exclusives on their PC? So either not all MS exclusives are going to end up on PC, or high end console at higher price is incredibly redundant.

Because maybe there are people who don't want a PC, but are willing to buy a console for $500? And they'll have the Xbox Slim for the low end market. Everything kind of points to Microsoft developing a wide variety of devices, including a low power Chromecast-like stick. Why couldn't they be going after high end users with a pricier high end box?
 
Because maybe there are people who don't want a PC, but are willing to buy a console for $500? And they'll have the Xbox Slim for the low end market. Everything kind of points to Microsoft developing a wide variety of devices, including a low power Chromecast-like stick. Why couldn't they be going after high end users with a pricier high end box?

Then at that point they should just create prebuilt PC's with a Xbox frontend and logo.
Would make sense with them bringing the Xbox UI to Windows 10. Your PC games would just show up in your library, steam would have it's own store app. I could see it work.

Basically, take all the good stuff about PC gaming and console gaming and combine the two for a comfy couch experience.
 
Then at that point they should just create prebuilt PC's with a Xbox frontend and logo.
Would make sense with them bringing the Xbox UI to Windows 10. Your PC games would just show up in your library, steam would have it's own store app. I could see it work.

Basically, take all the good stuff about PC gaming and console gaming and combine the two for a comfy couch experience.

They won't because that doesn't lock people into their ecosystem. I don't think we'll ever see Microsoft release an Xbox that let's people run Steam. It would be completely counter to their whole business.
 
Because maybe there are people who don't want a PC, but are willing to buy a console for $500? And they'll have the Xbox Slim for the low end market. Everything kind of points to Microsoft developing a wide variety of devices, including a low power Chromecast-like stick. Why couldn't they be going after high end users with a pricier high end box?

I don't think the market is very big for $500 consoles. Specially once that are going to have their successors released every 2 to 3 years. Unlike phones, consoles are not necessities.

For the record I don't think a console containing 6TF GPU is going to cost $500 either, even if it is releasing in Fall of 2017. Not if MS is trying to make profits. But hey, they probably know something I don't.
 
Reading a lot of posts in the thread, I can only shake my head.

720p, 1080p, 4K, and others are resolutions. These represent one of two values:

1. The ratio of horizontal to vertical pixels rendered by a game engine

2. The ratio of horizontal to vertical pixels that a game is displayed on your tv or monitor at.

They are not always the same value. When you display a game at a higher resolution than it is rendered at, it is considered to be upscaled. When you render a game at a higher resolution than it is displayed at, it is considered to be downsampled. Upscaling stretches rendered pixels, downsampling compresses them.

Now, resolution is not the only factor of how a game looks. Every engine is different, but typically, graphical settings have different values that can be chosen to either improve image quality or game performance (frames per second). Some of the available settings include, but are not limited to:

Texture quality (the level of detail of in-game assets)
Shadow quality
Lighting quality
Smoke/fog quality
Draw Distance
Anti-aliasing
Reflection Quality
Etc etc etc

The reason I bring this up is because it seems like way too many people here think and are wrongly saying that the only determining factors in image quality and performance of games are resolution and frame rate. This is not correct. IF Scorpio has almost 2 extra TFlops compared to Neo, there will be plenty of settings that can be bumped up besides resolution to make the game and its effects look better, while maintaining the same frame rate and resolution, if not increasing them (well, resolution at least). And these aren't some special add ons - they're already in the game engines, waiting to be adjusted.
 
Consoles are going into beast mode hopefully devs are ready to take advantage of them.

They are barely able to take advantage of current gen for the most part, most devs fro last gen haven't even released non cross gen games yet
 
Reading a lot of posts in the thread, I can only shake my head.

720p, 1080p, 4K, and others are resolutions. These represent one of two values:

1. The ratio of horizontal to vertical pixels rendered by a game engine

2. The ratio of horizontal to vertical pixels that a game is displayed on your tv or monitor at.

They are not always the same value. When you display a game at a higher resolution than it is rendered at, it is considered to be upscaled. When you render a game at a higher resolution than it is displayed at, it is considered to be downsampled. Upscaling stretches rendered pixels, downsampling compresses them.

Now, resolution is not the only factor of how a game looks. Every engine is different, but typically, graphical settings have different values that can be chosen to either improve image quality or game performance (frames per second). Some of the available settings include, but are not limited to:

Texture quality (the level of detail of in-game assets)
Shadow quality
Lighting quality
Smoke/fog quality
Draw Distance
Anti-aliasing
Reflection Quality
Etc etc etc

The reason I bring this up is because it seems like way too many people here think and are wrongly saying that the only determining factors in image quality and performance of games are resolution and frame rate. This is not correct. IF Scorpio has almost 2 extra TFlops compared to Neo, there will be plenty of settings that can be bumped up besides resolution to make the game and its effects look better, while maintaining the same frame rate and resolution, if not increasing them (well, resolution at least). And these aren't some special add ons - they're already in the game engines, waiting to be adjusted.

I haven't been diligently reading every page but I haven't seen many posts indicating that people think resolution and frame rate are the only factors in graphical quality. I think we all know there are other bells and whistles that can be tweaked. this isn't 2013 anymore.
 
would be a hell of a surprise if it actually releases this year with target specs ...
Hell yes it would...

And anyone actually believing this might happen is going to be crushed to oblivion.

MS wasn't even going to announce this year let alone release the thing. Sony once again is pushing them to get off their Laurels. I think Scorpio is further away from release than a lot of people realize.

Neo on the other hand has a chance at getting out this fall to coincide with the VR release I imagine.
 
I don't think the market is very big for $500 consoles. Specially once that are going to have their successors released every 2 to 3 years. Unlike phones, consoles are not necessities.

For the record I don't think a console containing 6TF GPU is going to cost $500 either, even if it is releasing in Fall of 2017. Not if MS is trying to make profits. But hey, they probably know something I don't.

There may not be. But they still have the Xbox Slim to entice users into their ecosystem. Like, look, you can buy this $200 box, and you can play these games, and they'll look mediocre. But you can play them right now on this $200 box. Then two years down the line, you can buy another box for $200, and suddenly all those games will look like this.

Whether or not this works is anyone's guess. Will the promise of your games looking better when you finally upgrade be enough to entice people to buy the cheap Xbox? Will the price point be attractive enough at the low end for people to not mind "inferior" version of games? Will the Xbox Scorpio price itself out of the market? Will the PS4 Neo steal all the thunder and continue it's dominating run? Or maybe the Xbox Scorpio is so spectacular that people forgo the PS4 Neo in anticipation of better hardware? Who knows? But it'll be fun to watch and see what happens.
 
I haven't been diligently reading every page but I haven't seen many posts indicating that people think resolution and frame rate are the only factors in graphical quality. I think we all know there are other bells and whistles that can be tweaked. this isn't 2013 anymore.

You're correct, but IMO it's the benchmark that still gets brought up the most in threads about power and the like.
 
Money for Microsoft as a whole =/= Money on the Xbox division.

Their shareholders would have a fit if they go back to the loss-leading model just to "beat another competitor" in specs, etc.
Things are different now.

Xbox is no longer a separate division within Ms, it's all under the same umbrella. It's a windows 10 device.

And there's another very important metric. The current CEO knows that gaming is one of the primary reason of why Windows got so big. And they also know that gaming is what consumers spent the most time and money on every platform.

That's why we are seeing xbox merging with windows, the point is no longer to sell consoles, but rather drive the insane user base win10 already has and that will only get bigger to consume from their store.
 
Things are different now.

Xbox is no longer a separate division within Ms, it's all under the same umbrella. It's a windows 10 device.

And there's another very important metric. The current CEO knows that gaming is one of the primary reason of why Windows got so big. And they also know that gaming is what consumers spent the most time and money on every platform.

That's why we are seeing xbox merging with windows, the point is no longer to sell consoles, but rather drive the insane user base win10 already has and that will only get bigger to consume from their store.

Yeah it seems the Xbox as a console will no longer be viewed as a gaming device that gets treated like the runt of the litter.

I think they'll now view it as a Living Room Windows 10 device. Or effectively a Microsoft HTPC if you will.
 
I don't think the market is very big for $500 consoles. Specially once that are going to have their successors released every 2 to 3 years. Unlike phones, consoles are not necessities.

For the record I don't think a console containing 6TF GPU is going to cost $500 either, even if it is releasing in Fall of 2017. Not if MS is trying to make profits. But hey, they probably know something I don't.
Keeping the high end boxes at $400-$500 is the whole point of this exercise.
There will still be the base unit at a lower price.

I don't know how they plan to make money. Consoles are traditionally loss leading and this is close to the business model 3DO was working with.
 
There may not be. But they still have the Xbox Slim to entice users into their ecosystem. Like, look, you can buy this $200 box, and you can play these games, and they'll look mediocre. But you can play them right now on this $200 box. Then two years down the line, you can buy another box for $200, and suddenly all those games will look like this.

Whether or not this works is anyone's guess. Will the promise of your games looking better when you finally upgrade be enough to entice people to buy the cheap Xbox? Will the price point be attractive enough at the low end for people to not mind "inferior" version of games? Will the Xbox Scorpio price itself out of the market? Will the PS4 Neo steal all the thunder and continue it's dominating run? Or maybe the Xbox Scorpio is so spectacular that people forgo the PS4 Neo in anticipation of better hardware? Who knows? But it'll be fun to watch and see what happens.

In all of this discussion my mind went on Nintendo earlier. No way they're entering the tech arms race so I suspect the NX is going to wind up another Wii U, and it won't be competing with the NEO/Scorpio. It will be competing with $199 'entry-level' ps4/xb1 slim models with mature libraries. Its anyone's guess exactly what Nintendo has up their sleeves, but good or bad all the buzz seems to be on these new .5 systems and NX is already beginning to feel like an afterthought. I'm really curious to see how they compete within this shifting paradigm of the console market.
 
In all of this discussion my mind went on Nintendo earlier. No way they're entering the tech arms race so I suspect the NX is going to wind up another Wii U, and it won't be competing with the NEO/Scorpio. It will be competing with $199 'entry-level' ps4/xb1 slim models with mature libraries. Its anyone's guess exactly what Nintendo has up their sleeves, but good or bad all the buzz seems to be on these new .5 systems and NX is already beginning to feel like an afterthought. I'm really curious to see how they compete within this shifting paradigm of the console market.
NX will be liquid nitrogen powered cartridge based add on to any system with an HDMI pass through. The more power Scorpio or Neo have, the more power NX has!

NX wins by default!
 
There may not be. But they still have the Xbox Slim to entice users into their ecosystem. Like, look, you can buy this $200 box, and you can play these games, and they'll look mediocre. But you can play them right now on this $200 box. Then two years down the line, you can buy another box for $200, and suddenly all those games will look like this.

Whether or not this works is anyone's guess. Will the promise of your games looking better when you finally upgrade be enough to entice people to buy the cheap Xbox? Will the price point be attractive enough at the low end for people to not mind "inferior" version of games? Will the Xbox Scorpio price itself out of the market? Will the PS4 Neo steal all the thunder and continue it's dominating run? Or maybe the Xbox Scorpio is so spectacular that people forgo the PS4 Neo in anticipation of better hardware? We'll find out in the next episode of DRAGONBALL Z!

fixed.
 
this thread is still open and discussion is going strong. So there is in fact some merit to the rumor? Because it still sounds bizarre to me.
 
In all of this discussion my mind went on Nintendo earlier. No way they're entering the tech arms race so I suspect the NX is going to wind up another Wii U, and it won't be competing with the NEO/Scorpio. It will be competing with $199 'entry-level' ps4/xb1 slim models with mature libraries. Its anyone's guess exactly what Nintendo has up their sleeves, but good or bad all the buzz seems to be on these new .5 systems and NX is already beginning to feel like an afterthought. I'm really curious to see how they compete within this shifting paradigm of the console market.
That's because Sony and Microsoft are getting their info leaked. Nintendo's time will come and NX is still a forethought.
 
this thread is still open and discussion is going strong. So there is in fact some merit to the rumor? Because it still sounds bizarre to me.

I trust Brad Sams information and with Kotaku coming out and basically corroborating his story with more info, I'm more inclined to believe most of it is true. I think that if anything we'll just have a Roku-stick like device, and an Xbox Slim announced at E3. At gamescom, they'll talk about Xbox Scorpio and games for 2017. That's my guess.
 
That's because Sony and Microsoft are getting their info leaked. Nintendo's time will come and NX is still a forethought.

And what do you believe they'll offer to reverse their fortunes coming off wii U? To be clear, I want Nintendo to be successful, as I do all the consoles, but I'm not sure what they're going to do to pull in the masses.
 
I trust Brad Sams information and with Kotaku coming out and basically corroborating his story with more info, I'm more inclined to believe most of it is true. I think that if anything we'll just have a Roku-stick like device, and an Xbox Slim announced at E3. At gamescom, they'll talk about Xbox Scorpio and games for 2017. That's my guess.

Oh ya, me too. I listen to Brad podcast every week for years now. I don't mean the part about Scorpio being true or not. I meant the ~6 TFLOP information. Brad did not talk about the spec at all, he did not know.
 
Oh ya, me too. I listen to Brad podcast every week for years now. I don't mean the part about Scorpio being true or not. I meant the ~6 TFLOP information. Brad did not talk about the spec at all, he did not know.

That was Polygon and Kotaku collaborating their information. Kotaku said it will be between 5-6 tereaflop and polygon reported 6.
 
They won't because that doesn't lock people into their ecosystem. I don't think we'll ever see Microsoft release an Xbox that let's people run Steam. It would be completely counter to their whole business.

I've brought this up several times when people gaffers start dreaming about a "Steam Machine" Xbox.

When it comes to Steam Machines, the "Machine" is not the important part. It's the "Steam".

Microsoft marketing console-like pcs designed to run Steam would just be doing Valve's work for them.
 
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