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Digital Foundry: Xbox Scorpio

le.phat

Member
So it's an Xbox pro with improvements one could expect from an extra year of dev time. I wonder what they hope to achieve with this project though. Sure, the hardcore fansboys will upgrade no doubt, but that's quite a limited pool to fish in. Are these specs future proof for the next generation, when it's the midrange option for Xbox in the current generation?
 
You know what would be shocking to me? If the following series of events played out:

  • Phil Spencer goes on stage at E3 2013 and announces that the price of the Xbox One would be $499 and receives the live audience equivilant of a record player scratch stop
  • The sales of the Xbox One were so poor due to a number of issues but chief among them the fact that they were priced well above Sony
  • Phil Spencer and team choose to remove Kinect in order to sell the Xbox One at the same price as the PS4 and possibly save the Xbox business
  • A couple of years go by and they decide to create a new, more powerful console as a pillar for the future of the brand
  • During the first step of the design phase, Phil Spencer gets up infront of his design team and says "We need to target a price of.... $499"
 

Yawnny

Member
I'm steel leery about it being able to do 4K. All we got here was a screenshot of Forza 3 saying it was 4k.. and by the way he was wording it didn't' sound like it was native 4K but some upconversion taking place?

Even if Forza 3 gets up to 4K I'm doubtful majority of games will be able to pump at at that resolution.

I mean, a 980ti at the minimum, and a 1080ti to be happy, with everything maxed is what's going to get you 4K these days and both those cards cost more than the whole system alone..
 

BigPapi

Member
Thinking about it a little longer, DX12 had already reduced CPU-GPU batch submission overhead by near 10fold over DX11. So while "halving the CPU load" of DX12 sounds impressive - what total percentages are we talking about though? Going from 10% CPU load to 5? 50 to 25?

Needs more than marketingspeak to know.

Processing draw calls - effectively telling the graphics hardware what to draw - is one of the most important tasks the CPU carries out. It can suck up a lot of processor resources, a pipeline that traditionally takes thousands - perhaps hundreds of thousands - of CPU instructions. With Scorpio's hardware offload, any draw call can be executed with just 11 instructions, and just nine for a state change.

From the article I dunno how much real world change this will have though
 

Tagyhag

Member
Do you need a display that supports freesync or anything will do? Sorry for the dumb question.

Yeah, I don't believe TV's support it yet but we'll see what happens in the coming months.

Ahh one more thing before I'm out.


It'd be more than $399 for sure. I'm willing to be crucified and shame quote on this for sure.

Now I'm not so sure.

They might be taking a loss but if they end the show with "$399" it's going to look really really good for them.

Especially since the Pro will definitely have bundles during the time this is coming out
 
This exactly - I didn't skip the One because of specs, I moved from the 360 to PS4 because of games. If they get they get some amazing exclusives, I'm buying if not, I'm skipping.

It's like the Wii U - def less powerful, but I got one when the the games I wanted were there.

The demise of the x1 was a combination of things really.. At launch it had terrible PR .. TV TV TV on top of always on and built in Kinect... Then over time it was never at parity with the PS4 with Specs / resolution.. so from a multi platform perspective it wasnt on par in some cases. I believe that damaged the brand and pushed traditional Xbox user (from the 360)s off their ecosystem on to the Sony platform. What incentive does someone have now to move off the PS4 for the Scorpio when they can move to the Ps4 Pro with roughly the same graphic fidelity? Are graphics going to be enough?

MSFT killed Halo (pushed Bungie out), Gears of War isnt fresh.. Fable is MIA... Forza has never really been a huge selling point. Titanfall fell flat and is multi platform now.. Sunset Overdrive never really became a recurring franchise.. and Scalebound never became a thing. Timed exclusives don't really matter much anymore so im wondering what MSFT thinks is going to sell the Scorpio.. because it isnt going to be price... it will be 500 bux at the bare min?
 

Jacob4815

Member
Features system-wide downsampling for games which render above 1080p. This improves the image quality for people using 1080p displays.

This is very good.
Sony needs to learn and must release a firmware for system-wide downsampling.
 

The Hermit

Member
HDMI 2.1 this is amazing actually. It supports freesync

I wasn't expecting anything, and I am very interested in this console now.
 

Wollan

Member
I'm a bit confused on the HDMI standard.

Article sais HDMI 2.0 but some say 2.1 in this thread (source?).
Maybe it's AMD FreeSync that's part of it (and not HDMI 2.1 adaptive sync)?

edit: Seems like mis-information spreading in this thread. It's standard HDMI 2.0.
 

Falchion

Member
So Scorpio is going to be really fast but is the supersampling of 4K down to a 1080p display really worth the power? It seems like developers are more likely to chase the higher framerate and resolutions as opposed to graphical quality so will the benefit for non-4K users be there?
 
I can't see this being $500, because Microsoft would want to stay competitive. I think $400-450 is likely. Ps4 pro will probably price cut to $350 this fall.
 

Starfield

Member
Would you have thought in 2013 that there is ever gonna be a positive MS related thread again? I wouldn't, but here it is, it is real...everything.
 

marrec

Banned
Anyone here who isn't already part of the Xbox One family planning on picking up a Scorpio? I gave my Xbox One away last year but depending on the first party output this E3 Scoprio might be a good system to jump back in with. I only really miss Sunset Overdrive and Halo 5, I still have access to lots of other Xbox One games on PC.

Depends on the games, nothing's caught my eye as of yet but since I have a capable PC it may all just be a wash.
 
"Features system-wide downsampling for games which render above 1080p. This improves the image quality for people using 1080p displays."

Whudda thunk that'd be a good idea?

This and the risky choice they made in allowing older games to utilize the full power of the machine are what has me sold. I was ready to make the PS4 Pro my "primary" system if they delivered something similar. Instead I just went with the slim to play exclusives on.
 

ironcreed

Banned
They're going to look the same as they do now and run just as bad, but at 4K. How is that exciting? Just FYI - Forza Apex runs at 4K on PC on very modest hardware.

So the extra power and optimization is all for naught and no improvements will be seen?

yeah-ok.gif


Might as well just scrap it then, such a horrible design and all. I'll just go build a PC and ascend to the land of the master race just to be sure. It's the only way.
 
Wait, I guess the GPU improvements don't reach the targeted 6TFlops then?
The memory increase is very much welcome, though. Don't know why Sony thought keeping the same 8GB was a good idea.
 

jm89

Member
I don't think MS will be willing to eat costs to make it $399.

I think it will release at $499 , it will attract the enthusiasts the mainstream are staying with their ps4 or xb1. This isn't the mobile market people stay with their console for years.
 

Yawnny

Member
On the bright side this doesn't mean we have to go buy all new games.. people can still be happy that Xbox One and PS4 are still "this generation".. just with "refreshes"

Looks like refreshes will be the new hot thing to try and one-up the competition.. consumers will be spending more money than ever.
 

KORNdoggy

Member
I toally understand that MS needs more than a stronger hardware. BUT, I constantly heard people saying they had no reason to buy an XB1 cause it was weaker than a PS4.

I do think MS needs to work on more exclusives (it doesn't matter if it's UWP at this point though), but at least at least it seems they got their hardware right this time. That's a step forward.

i think the difference between third party output is going to be negligible purely because i can't imagine any third party dev wanting to put the time and effort into taking full advantage of the scorpio for the sake of a comparatively small userbase. which means the difference will be between native 4k and CBR 4k, and DF themselves have stated time and time again that the difference is hard to spot and they're looking for it. imagine being sat on your couch.

this leaves first party output to show what the machine can do, but that's exactly where MS is lacking. and the games they do make are on PC already, a platform capable of much more in the graphics department anyway.

i'm not sure what MS can do really to change the way things have been going to last 3 years. but it will definitely make the time between now and next gen a little less painful.
 
So it's an Xbox pro with improvements one could expect from an extra year of dev time. I wonder what they hope to achieve with this project though. Sure, the hardcore fansboys will upgrade no doubt, but that's quite a limited pool to fish in. Are these specs future proof for the next generation, when it's the midrange option for Xbox in the current generation?
It's aimed at the same crowd the PS4 Pro was aimed at, enthusiast. Regular Xbox one will sell more than the Scorpio like the regular PS4 will outsell the pro.
 
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