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[Lady Gaia]

Xbox Scorpio without Zen, but rather an old Jaguar CPU is just not future proof

"Future proof" is a phrase that should never be applied to technology without a serious dose of sarcasm. Some products remain useful longer than others, but any successor is by definition going to have appealing aspects the earlier product lacks.

so you have to buy the next Xbox 3 years down the road, again.

You never have to buy a new a product, but they're going to do their damnedest to make it appealing. They also have limited incentive to extend the life of a product they've already sold you.

 

[Varjis]

Believe.

+Zen CPU, $400, runs cooler and quieter than Xbox One S, internal power brick, and smaller than Xbox One S

+Also, Microsoft will buy Atlus, Playdead (Limbo/Inside devs), Thekla (The Witness dev), Fullbright (Gone Home / Tacoma devs), Studio MDHR (Cuphead devs), and Remedy and immediately start development on exclusive 1st party games from those devs.

+New Japanese 1st party studio called Osaka Japan is created and making Lost Odyssey 2 and Blue Dragon 2

+Sunset Overdrive 2 announced

Now the real E3 press conference will make me sad versus this one.

 

[Leyasu]

LOL do you know who you're talking to?

Who i sneakerSO please? I'm intrigued

 

[Metalingus5150]

Hopefully Scorpio will make a bitchin 4k blu ray player.

 

[Larogue]

If it's true that it's using 8 cores Ryzen CPU.

Then that's just like slapping high end i7 in a console. This will be HUGE leap.

 

[tiredheadcrab]

If it's true that it's using 8 cores Ryzen CPU.

Then that's just like slapping high end i7 in a console. This will be HUGE leap.

Well idk about Ryzen but zen can fit in different form factors like intels cpus. You will have the high end desktop, mid range desktop, laptop, and surface type cpus. Scorpio will probably use a low power zen cpu.

Idk why people jump to the desktop chips as if that's the only form factor amd is targeting.

 

[ForkNetwork]

Believe.

+Zen CPU, $400, runs cooler and quieter than Xbox One S, internal power brick, and smaller than Xbox One S

+Also, Microsoft will buy Atlus, Playdead (Limbo/Inside devs), Thekla (The Witness dev), Fullbright (Gone Home / Tacoma devs), Studio MDHR (Cuphead devs), and Remedy and immediately start development on exclusive 1st party games from those devs.

+New Japanese 1st party studio called Osaka Japan is created and making Lost Odyssey 2 and Blue Dragon 2

+Sunset Overdrive 2 announced

Buying seven different studios? might as well buy Sony

 

[EmiPrime]

All I want is OG Xbox BC and for all those who refuse to remove the sticker from the front of the XB1 to get lifetime XBL bans.

I am easy to please.

 

[Lady Gaia]

Buying seven different studios? might as well buy Sony

Buying multiple smaller studios isn't at all unrealistic. At the same time, acquiring studios hasn't been where Microsoft struggles. Managing them to grow talent, incubate new ideas, and ultimately produce something attractive is where they've had predictable trouble over the years. Until they've got that figured out I'm not sure buying more studios is going to solve anything.

 

[onQ123]

Who i sneakerSO please? I'm intrigued

Doesn't he work for MS? maybe I'm mixing up the name

 

[EmiPrime]

The idea that indie developers would sell up to Microsoft (especially Johnathan Blow) or that Microsoft would buy indie studios after cutting loose or closing the ones they had bought previously is laughable at best.

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

Doesn't he work for MS? maybe I'm mixing up the name

Don't think so.

The only posters I know of that do (or did) work for MS (unless I'm mistaken) are dLMN8R, justsomeguy and time...something. Can't remember the name.

I was fairly sure Sneakers was more of a Sony fan.

 

[EmiPrime]

Don't think so.

The only posters I know of that do (or did) work for MS (unless I'm mistaken) are dLMN8R, justsomeguy and time...something. Can't remember the name.

I was fairly sure Sneakers was more of a Sony fan.

Poor Stinkles.

 

[AmyS]

Could it be that Scorpio's CPU uses Zen micro-architecture, without actually technically being a desktop RyZen part ?

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

Poor Stinkles.

Oooh shit. Forgot about him, but he's more celebrity than "normal poster". Like Penello and Hyrb on here too.

 

[CassidyIzABeast]

Oooh shit. Forgot about him, but he's more celebrity than "normal poster". Like Penello and Hyrb on here too.

Stinkles is a normie, he posts in Off Topic all the time.

 

[BeforeU]

Oooh shit. Forgot about him, but he's more celebrity than "normal poster". Like Penello and Hyrb on here too.

lol what? Completely opposite actually. He is just like a regular gaffer. Posts in gaming and off topic all day.

 

[HeisenbergWW62]

Who i sneakerSO please? I'm intrigued

Phil Spencer

 

[hanspampel]

"Future proof" is a phrase that should never be applied to technology without a serious dose of sarcasm. Some products remain useful longer than others, but any successor is by definition going to have appealing aspects the earlier product lacks.



You never have to buy a new a product, but they're going to do their damnedest to make it appealing. They also have limited incentive to extend the life of a product they've already sold you.

so call it more or less futureproof
don't use it as a definitive statement like something is or isn't future proof


i just see a potential ZEN Scorpion with a longer support horizon
a Jaguar Scorpio? likely to end with PS5 and the next Xbox
i also talk about software and os features. ms is doing good on bringing constant updates. a great cpu should benefit from that.

not to mention all the improvements on the CPU itself.
Zen is more energy efficient
Zen has more power per mm²
Zen has more IPC

I just don't want old bad tech, when there is better stuff available.
not, when you want me to sell a $399 or $499 "true next gen" monster


i also have my expectations in check
companies just don't release a perfect product, that isn't missing anything. you would not upgrade in that case
i still wait for the perfect phone (for me)

 

[EmiPrime]

Oooh shit. Forgot about him, but he's more celebrity than "normal poster". Like Penello and Hyrb on here too.

Stinkles is unwashed filth like the rest of us!

 

[Shpeshal Nick]

Stinkles is a normie, he posts in Off Topic all the time.

lol what? Completely opposite actually. He is just like a regular gaffer. Posts in gaming and off topic all day.

Stinkles is unwashed filth like the rest of us!

I know he posts plenty. Especially the OT. I'm just saying he's a known studio head.

He's not an unknown poster who works for MS and leaks info. I'm clearly struggling to explain myself here.

 

[2blackcats]

Buying multiple smaller studios isn't at all unrealistic. At the same time, acquiring studios hasn't been where Microsoft struggles. Managing them to grow talent, incubate new ideas, and ultimately produce something attractive is where they've had predictable trouble over the years. Until they've got that figured out I'm not sure buying more studios is going to solve anything.

Very true.

Are there any examples of them starting a studio from scratch and building it up besides turn 10 studios and 343? They are sitting on so many awesome ips you'd think a dev that could jump between different games would be a no brainer.

 

[MCD]

It's almost April and no leaks still.

Must be canned.

 

[SpartanN92]

Very true.

Are there any examples of them starting a studio from scratch and building it up besides turn 10 studios and 343? They are sitting on so many awesome ips you'd think a dev that could jump between different games would be a no brainer.

The Coalition/Black Tusk

 

[SpartanN92]

lol what? Completely opposite actually. He is just like a regular gaffer. Posts in gaming and off topic all day.

That beautiful bald bastard 😂
He's good people

 

[TheScarecrow101]

With the facts being that there are no leaks, it is building more anticipation for news about a console than ever before. Thinking back to the ps4pro and switch leaks, it lead to speculation that ended up mostly on the money about what the consoles offered and the range of their performance/features.

With scorpio being on lock down with no real information than the reveal info from e3 2016, I think Microsoft is putting their best effort to keep it this way. Even the announcement of the xbox one was not the earth shattering meteor they hoped for. Sony managed that and rode the news cycle high for a few months.

To paraphrase Ryan McCaffery. "This is the bold Microsoft. Getting out there and being aggressive about what they can do to make gaming better, starting with this forward looking hardware announcement" and I agree. They are holding the cards close to the chest because they want to make a big impact and sell people on scorpio the moment they know the details.

With every day that passes, getting closer to a announce event or e3, they risk a leak that will pull apart the hype in a instant. Places like neogaf, reddit and twitter will start tearing that info apart and they will lose the opportunity to control the dialogue. It is unfortunately what I felt hampered Sony with the ps4pro announcement. It felt lackluster as we knew what it would have for months before and they couldn't add anything new to bring people aboard.

But. I will bring it back to the current talk. Zen or no. Microsoft have been smart when it comes to their hardware design and how software builds that capacity. No matter the cost, I am on board. Even if the aussie price goes up towards the $1000 for a launch ps3. Microsoft have been my team and I can't wait to see what this box will do and to see how Sony respond in the years ahead.

 

[2blackcats]

The Coalition/Black Tusk

I always thought they were bought and then renamed (zipline?).

I stand corrected.

Here's hoping for a surprise announcement of new studio and game at E3.

 

[Caayn]

I guess I can understand this mindset. I'm just not clear why a dramatic change in the CPU would be a priority when the plan is to have all software run on Xbox One as well as Scorpio. It seems the pricey and time-consuming investment would go largely unused. Everything Microsoft has said indicates that the goal is to run Xbox One titles at 4K.

Agree. But it doesn't sit right with the talk about moving away from generations to a generationless era. If they are indeed wanting to do that it means that at one point they will need to up the CPU resources immensely in order to keep up and move forward, "mere" increases in clocks won't do.

Releasing Scorpio with the XB1 cpu, with improved clocks, will hamper whatever will succeed Scorpio.

It's up to MS to ensure that hardware abstractions allows for games to be written for one spec while also working on future iterations without alterations. Not too dissimilar from what we're seeing on PC.

 

[Jaguar Victory]

I guess I can understand this mindset. I'm just not clear why a dramatic change in the CPU would be a priority when the plan is to have all software run on Xbox One as well as Scorpio. It seems the pricey and time-consuming investment would go largely unused. Everything Microsoft has said indicates that the goal is to run Xbox One titles at 4K.



The year's delay will have enabled enough GPU power to run 1080p Xbox One titles at 4K native resolutions. That wouldn't have been practical last year. It may also have hit a point on the price curve where 12GB of GDDR5 can be included at their target price point.

Releasing 4 years later with the same CPU would be a giant wet fart. There is no way. I'm on team Ryzen light.

 

[onQ123]

Poor Stinkles.

That's who I mixed him up with

 

[Synth]

I wonder what changed his mind?

I'm going to guess the actual existence of these upgraded consoles kinda blew his original stance up. At the time he was very confident in his claims.

I dont think it is 2 versions of the same game, Spencer said the UWA make sit work independent of the hardware. So.. and someone correct me if I am wrong, the same game disk goes in both machines and the software detects the console type and scales the fps, resolution, AA, etc... accordingly.

That's what I'm getting anyway

It will never work like that, unless the stronger hardware is emulating the weaker machine. In order for the game to run natively on both machines, it would have to be two versions of the same game.

I really dont think so.

I'm a dev - I AM TELLING YOU, that's the only way this works. Especially for closed-box software development.

 

[Chobel]

I'm going to guess the actual existence of these upgraded consoles kinda blew his original stance up. At the time he was very confident in his claims.

I wouldn't say he's 100% wrong

https://twitter.com/JezCorden/status/845722863395065857

 

[Outrun]

I don't know your background but what do you think is different between PC and console when it comes to how you control and execute code on a CPU?

There is none. CPUs on PCs and console use the same instruction set (= machine code) this generation (I talk about x64/x86 family of processors).

The only difference is that your CPU in a console has more space (utilization) for your game as it is not used for background threads/processes have nothing to do with gaming.

Guess what why MS is introducing "Game Mode" on PC's? Because they want to get the same kind of prioritisation of game process/threads on a PC like on a console.

The main reason a Windows Game is not running on your console is that they use different kind of OS layers and APIs. At least for Windows 10 MS tries to even get rid of this barrier with their UWP approach. Btw UWP apps just using the same packages (code) that is compiled once for the target (x64 CPUs). As you already should have guessed correctly, they behave and run the same way on console or any PC no matter what x86 CPU you are using.

You are right. Devs should have no issue with Zen.

 

[AmyS]

It's almost April and no leaks still.

Must be canned.

Microsoft waiting for the Switch hype to die down a little more before talking about Scorpio.

I'm not expecting a lot during April and May, but a few vague comments by Phil here and there. 98% of everything Scorpio related being saved for that Sunday E3 showing.

Unless something major leaks by a reputable outlet like Eurogamer.

 

[Xumbrega]

Everytime I see this thread with new replies I hope there's new info about the Scorpio.

And everytime I leave disappointed .

Come on, MS.

At least announce a date for the Scorpio event, I don't even care anymore just say something.. =(.

 

[D4Danger]

Everytime I see this thread with new replies I hope there's new info about the Scorpio.

And everytime I leave disappointed .

Come on, MS.

At least announce a date for the Scorpio event, I don't even care anymore just say something.. =(.

is it not E3 June 11 or is there suppose to be something before then?

 

[BeforeU]

Microsoft waiting for the Switch hype to die down a little more before talking about Scorpio.

I'm not expecting a lot during April and May, but a few vague comments by Phil here and there. 98% of everything Scorpio related being saved for that Sunday E3 showing.

Unless something major leaks by a reputable outlet like Eurogamer.

E3 sunday is too far

is it not E3 June 11 or is there suppose to be something before then?

Nothing firm, but most people are expecting some hardware news before E3

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

Microsoft waiting for the Switch hype to die down a little more before talking about Scorpio.

I'm not expecting a lot during April and May, but a few vague comments by Phil here and there. 98% of everything Scorpio related being saved for that Sunday E3 showing.

Unless something major leaks by a reputable outlet like Eurogamer.

But judging by what Phil Spencer said E3 is all about the games and not hardware. That should mean they reveal it before E3, somehow some way. It's just odd that he couldn't say yet anything about it during IGN podcast and still not in recent tweets. How are these plans not yet made?

 

[LukasTaves]

I wouldn't say he's 100% wrong

https://twitter.com/JezCorden/status/845722863395065857

I dunno if Ms will disclose details, but esram shouldn't be much of an issue. esram is just a very fast low latency memory the gpu has access to, and the gpu had hardware support for stuff moving data in and out esram, along with apis to increase esram usage. Even if the games are completely hard coded for it, worst case scenario they just have to create a small pool in the main memory, and provided everything is fast enough they could mimic without any issue. But considering the xbone layout around virtualized environment it could potentially be even less work.

The virtualized environment makes it even a less issue on the cpu side, as there's already a abstraction layer (that costs in game performance) in place.

And that's just for xbone games, prior to uwp. With uwp that's even less of an issue, because it was made to support even different cpu architectures with the same code.

Edit: Also, Ms already stated that there is absolutely no emulating involved on running non uwp Xbone games on Scorpio.

 

[AmyS]

But judging by what Phil Spencer said E3 is all about the games and not hardware. That should mean they reveal it before E3, somehow some way. It's just odd that he couldn't say yet anything about it during IGN podcast and still not in recent tweets. How are these plans not yet made?

Yeah, true.

We'll see.

 

[bill0527]

I don't expect anything until E3.

With that said I'm still all in on Xbox but there better a killer fucking lineup announced with Scorpio. I know the hardware's going to be awesome, most powerful, blah blah but it doesn't mean shit without the software.

I think this will be the most important E3 in Xbox history in terms of absolutely needing a home run in the software department.

If all I get is Halo 6, next Forza, and Crackdown, I'm going to be real disappointed.

 

[Xumbrega]

is it not E3 June 11 or is there suppose to be something before then?

Phil has said some times that they plan to focus on games at the E3, so I am expecting a Scorpio hardware event , but I can be wrong tho.

 

[Synth]

I wouldn't say he's 100% wrong

https://twitter.com/JezCorden/status/845722863395065857

I'd argue "it's not emulation" is a close as you can really get to wrong when stating "that's the only way this works" (emulation).

He was literally arguing that an upgraded Xbox wouldn't play current XB1 games without being essentially the exact same configuration of the original console.

 

[MosquitoSmasher]

I don't expect anything until E3.

With that said I'm still all in on Xbox but there better a killer fucking lineup announced with Scorpio. I know the hardware's going to be awesome, most powerful, blah blah but it doesn't mean shit without the software.

I think this will be the most important E3 in Xbox history in terms of absolutely needing a home run in the software department.

If all I get is Halo 6, next Forza, and Crackdown, I'm going to be real disappointed.

It's best to keep your expectations low. Look at last year's E3. They didn't announce one single new game, correct me if I'm wrong. I really wonder if they will announce one or two brand new AAA games for next year however and by which studios it will be developed. Plus we have to keep in mind what Phil Spencer said about announcing and showing games too soon, that they won't do this anymore. So with that in mind I really doubt we'll see new games if they aren't planned for 2018 but 2019.

It's great that Phil acknowledged the first party problem, more or less but I certainly am not expecting any miracles. Really doubt MS is going to be announcing brand new IP left and right. Expect Forza 7, Crackdown 3, State of Decay 2, hopefully Moon Studios' new game and Sea of Thieves.

Would be superb if I'm wrong though.

 

[Chobel]

I'd argue "it's not emulation" is a close as you can really get to wrong when stating "that's the only way this works" (emulation).

He was literally arguing that an upgraded Xbox wouldn't play current XB1 games without being essentially the exact same configuration of the original console.

Depends on how you define emulation. As far as I'm concerned, if there's translation to some code from one architecture to another (which from the look of it, it's exactly what's happening here), then that's some form of emulation.

 

[blastprocessor]

Thing is if it was just an up clocked Jaguar CPU it would be more unbalanced than PS4 pro. Gotta hope for more.

 

[EmiPrime]

This E3 will show if MS is satisfied bumbling along, being in second place, squeezing a bit more money from the die hards upgrading to Scorpio, ready to try again next generation or if this will be almost a relaunch of the Xbox One brand worldwide with MS going all out, determined to not let that 2:1 deficit become a 3:1 deficit. I hope it's the latter: I want the MS equivalent of Sony E3 2015. 2 hours of Forza 7, Crackdown 3, Ori 2, SOD2 and SOT plus multi-plats won't cut it.

 

[SenjutsuSage]

Just don't go full MisterXMedia & keep claiming its in there and going to be a launch/later date surprise when they unlock the full power on this thing. Thats the last thing we need around here.

I'll never go there. No fear there.

 

[Bsigg12]

Depends on how you define emulation. As far as I'm concerned, if there's translation to some code from one architecture to another (which from the look of it, it's exactly what's happening here), then that's some form of emulation.

Isn't memory management handled by the hypervisor with the Xbox One? Wouldn't Microsoft just need to build out the hypervisor to translate any existing ESRAM coding to work across whatever high-speed solution they have in the Scorpio?

 

[Zvonimir Boban]

I saw that rumour. Hmm, the plot thickens. Phone?

omg PLEASE be a phone