Are you bummed about Zen?
Not at all. As I've said all along, that was just more high hopes, wanting Microsoft to go balls to the wall, but if what I'm reading pans out, there was never any need with the expertise they can bring to bear to go so far in the first place.
That customization related to the CPU, moving DX12 over to the GPU command processor sounds like a pretty great fucking idea, especially if the reported reduction in rendering overhead really ends up panning out as expected. This thing sounds like a beast. Something I tried to mention to people from the start was that I was never going to be angry or hugely disappointed if by some chance it didn't have Zen, because I was convinced that Microsoft would, as far as consoles are concerned, have a bit of a beast on their hands. What I didn't expect is that it would provide not just performance boost to all kinds of existing Xbox One titles automatically (well, I kinda did expect this to happen since it happens with xbox one s already), but I wasn't expecting automatic boosts to visuals also in the form of much improved anisotropic filtering.
Also, it's looking like expectations that this would perform up there with, or maybe even better than a 980 TI weren't so crazy after all. Hell, it's just one test, but according to DF they saw Scorpio more or less handling 4K 60FPS Ultra PC settings at the same level as a GTX 1070. Now obviously Forza is a unique case, but who honestly expected before this reveal that such a statement, forza or no, would ever actually be possible? I might have said it once or twice just being excited and silly, but for it to possibly turn out accurate? Well, we'll see.
Scorpio was always a guaranteed purchase for me with or without Zen. And judging by what we all read, there's a chance this may, with some of the things they did, end up fairly expensive. Zen really might have put it over the top. So if it means keeping it within a certain range, I'm fine with that. If by some miracle they were to announce this thing for $399.99 LOL. That'd be crazy, but I'm expecting higher.