What is Project Scorpio really?

I know it's a new system that MS is working on. Is Project Scorpio a new next generation system or will it play the same games as the One? Or could it be that it will just play better versions of One games but when PS5 releases MS won't need to release a new system they will just drop developing One games and just make new games exclusive to the Scorpio as it will be probably just as powerful or close as to PS5 in power, this way MS is ahead in sales and userbase ?

A souped up 8th gen console that will probably go for native 4k.

Most powerful console ever made.

it will actually kick off the 9th gen

They better not make scorpio exclusive games. I'll be really pissed off.

Honestly, we won't really be able to answer that or have an idea until it has been announced. If they make Scorpio exclusive games for it, then we are pretty much looking at a new generation since it would be new hardware with exclusive titles not found on previous generations. It'll be interesting. I think Microsoft has so far teased it as a spec'd up Xbox One.

It will come bundled with the highest quality pixels ever seen on the planet earth.

@silversix_: Artisan hipster pixels.

This is a redundant statement that only means "The newest one released"

There has nothing been stated to indicate that Scorpio will kick off a new generation. It has been defined to be part of the XB1 family.

lol the SWITCH

Nintendo is it's own thing and a hybrid device, so that was implied.

Trying to convince anyone I meant otherwise is desperation.

A hail mary.

Amen, Switch is most powerful Hybrid Console ever released. So we have,

Switch = Most powerful hybrid console

Scorpio = Most powerful home console

PC = Most powerful gaming device

Lems be like...

Power doesn't spell the starting of a new generation, it's a myriad of factors.

It's a generation 8 system just as the PlayStation 4 Pro is, it's simply more powerful.

I hope Microsoft say f*ck it and make it a next gen system, kicking it off in style like they did with the Xbox 360 back in the day.

It's the end of standard "generations" as we know it... atleast for MS. Scorpio is just a more powerful console based in the same ecosystem as XB1, XB1 S and Win 10. All will live side by side, atleast for a period. Eventually you'd imagine that the current XB1 models will be discontinued and Scorpio will become the main system. Then another premium model will most likely come out after PS5.

fixed

Actually, it's AMD is working on Project Scorpio hardware not MS.

Since Nintendo are doing a handheld/home console hybrid, this Scorpio could be a home console/PC hybrid. What ever it is, one thing we know for sure it's the most powerful console this gen. And it will be the best all in one console too.

Why don't people go on Google and find this information? Simple question with easily found answers.

@iandizion713: wait a god damn second. yesterday you were saying that power is a gimmick and only dudebros care about it, and today you're saying "Amen, Switch is most powerful Hybrid Console ever released. So we have, Switch = Most powerful hybrid console".

You need to calm your tits there. Calm your sheep tits.

@silversix_: Graphics are gimmicks.

Oh this should be rich, please do explain.

Where does this microsoft love come from?

@dynamitecop: Graphics don't make your game good or bad, it's just a gimmick used in the game. NES, SNES, N64, you name it, plenty of amazing games that dont require such gimmicks to be fun.

It's vaporware until I see a demo.

As I am tired of repeating at this point, I don't have much issues with Microsoft, as much as I have issues with the Xbox One itself. I loved the Xbox 360, it was my personal favorite console of last generation, and I spent seven years on this board championing it over other systems. But of course, that tends to be forgotten, because people would rather believe that I have an agenda, or am on a 'smear campaign.'

It's the exact same idea that the PS4 Pro is, only it's quite a bit more powerful and can play 4k Blu-Rays.

The only real problem withe Scorpio is that Microsoft has jack shit for a game library. Sad.

What benefit would come from just making it a new individual console? I can tell you what right now, absolutely nothing. It's not like games would be any different, it's not like it would not play Xbox One and Xbox 360 games, and nothing would change about its technical specifications.

The only difference would be that it eliminates the Xbox One from the equation, which doesn't solve anything and actually causes countless more problems and controversy.

@dynamitecop: Exactly... Abandoning the XB1 will achieve nothing except piss people off. It's better that nobody gets left behind and people that want the power, have the option with Scorpio. That's what Phil keeps saying, giving us more choice.

I think you are wrong. Given that currently the Scorpio has to maintain parity with the Xbox One, and every single Scorpio game has to run on an Xbox One too, the Scorpio's truly impressive and formidable power is effectively meaningless- sure, it means that the Scorpio will run games made for Xbox One at 4K resolutions, but that's it. There really is no actual utilization of all the extra resources the hardware brings with it to the table, and if the PS4 Pro is any indication, most third parties in such a situation will only do the bare minimum, if that (and the dynamics of install base mean that third parties should theoretically be more willing to support the Pro than they would an Xbox upgrade- theoretically,before you get your panties in a bunch and start pedantically arguing this point). That effectively means that all of the Scorpio's excess power is going to waste- sure, Microsoft gets to have the victory for resolution in multiplat games, but that's about it.

But imagine if the Scorpio was truly a next gen spec for third parties to target- imagine if a third party attempting to develop for Scorpio wasn't going to have to concern itself with paring its game down so it can run on a standard Xbox One as well. Imagine the kinds of games we could get, if they were made for a Vega CPU, a 6 TFLOPS GPU, and 12GB of RAM, instead of having to concern with what I am sure even you will agree barely passed for midrange specs in 2013, and are pretty on the lower end now. Think about the kinds of games, the massive leaps forwards, we could get. Do you remember how you felt the first time you played Oblivion, Gears of War, and Dead Rising? Because I do. And that only happened because third parties developed those games around the Xbox 360 spec, instead of also worrying about making those games run on Xbox (in which case, at best they would have made Xbox games, and uprezzed them, slamming some extra textures onto them, and called it a day; at worst, with having to support Xbox, they would have lowered themselves to supporting the PS2 and Gamecube additionally, developing for an even lower spec, and just speccing up from there- all three of these games would have been significantly less impressive in those cases).

Basically, you know how the Xbox was a major leap over the PS2, but for most third party games that it shared with the PS2, there was no real utilization of all that extra power? (Yes, I know some games did utilize it, but I am talking about the bulk, the 90%+ of the games). That's what would happen if the Scorpio had to maintain intercompatibility with the existing Xbox One. I think it's in Microsoft's own best interests to make the Scorpio a full fledged successor- the Xbox One will be four years old when the Scorpio is introduced (remember, even the original Xbox was able to get away with a four year life cycle without much trouble), and Microsoft themselves will have supported it with three Halo releases, two Gears of War releases, presumably five Forza releases, as well as other stuff like Sunset Overdrive and ReCore and Sea of Thieves and Killer Instinct. Move on, make the Scorpio a new system, make it backwards compatible with Xbox 360 and Xbox One, sure (and hey, maybe even throw in original Xbox compatibility if you can), and make it a brand new, discrete system. Its x86 architecture will in any case be intercompatible with Xbox One and even PS4 enough that third parties can continue developing 'cross gen games' for a while, should they wish to, but its very existence will spur Sony into fast tracking a PS5, and we won't be stuck with these consoles that weren't even impressive at launch, let alone now.

Is that not something you would want?

How can you have a problem with the Xbox One if you liked the Xbox 360? They are basically identical.

The only real problem is Microsoft's failure on supporting the console with must-have exclusives. That was a problem about halfway through the life of the Xbox 360 as well.

The reasons the Xbox 360 started ahead of the PS3 was because it got a head start, it had a few top-notch exclusives pretty early (Gears, Halo 3, and Oblivion, which was on the PC but PC versions are irrelevant to console sales), and it was cheaper. Once they got complacent Micrsooft stopped funneling money into 1st party titles. They ended up with their big 3, Halo, Forza, Gears. Two shooters and a realistic racing game. They banked on 3rd party titles being promoted more on the 360 (especially CoD).

Sony surpassed them simply by funding a lot more diverse games that would be exclusive on their machine. Sony's marketing of the PS3 was also superior once they fired basically the entire PS3 staff early on and pivoted to a proper console with a price drop and brand new marketing campaign.

The Xbox One's biggest problem is Microsoft. They sold the thing with a gimmick for too high of a price, they have a pitiful exclusive library, and their marketing is sub par. There is no reason to get an Xbox One over a PS4. They have done nothing to really distinguish themselves and that's all on Microsoft.

@Wasdie: The Xbox 360 had a whole lot more exclusives from western and Japanese third parties, as well as indie game developers, at least for the first four or five years of its life (in terms of indie developers, through to 2012, to be honest), a more diverse lineup of games from Microsoft (this was the era when Microsoft was commissioning and releasing games like Viva Pinata, Mass Effect, Alan Wake, Banjo Kazooie, Kameo, and Blue Dragon), and better running multiplatform games for almost every single notable release last generation.

The Xbox One, in contrast, has very little to entirely negligible exclusives from any kind of developer, has seen Microsoft's entire lineup be reduced to Halo, Gears, and Forza, and just an overall emphasis on multiplayer, games as service style games with little to no variation, and runs every single third party multiplatform game worse.

It's not that difficult, the Xbox One is functionally (though not in terms of hard metrics like specs and the like) an Xbox 360 done and executed worse.

If I recall correctly you made threads with the words 'smear campaign' in the thread title and If I asked you why you said because xbox was disrespecting the gamers. It's understandable, with their bad pr. But let's be honest here, sony was planning to forbid second hand games as well and the always online was already active for dlc on the x360. From a business perspective it's also understandable to avoid piracy. It didn't bother me really, since I'm always online, but the second hand games did bother me.

But on the other hand, disabling the second hand market could have increased the quality in games overall. Not to mention the amount of games, since it would have ensured more revenue for devs. Still I would not have chose playstation as my main platform just to have a second hand market. I use too much exclusive content from xbox for that.

What did bother me the most with the xboxone was the mandatory kinect though, I am from belgium europe, where privacy is much more valued than anywhere else in the world, so a mandatory always online camera was no deal for me. When I heard you could disconnect the kinect I still waited a year to buy the xbox, to have a kinectless version. The fact that I had to import the xbox the first year from another country did play a role too.

I can negate this entire novel with a single phrase, "graphics engine scalability"...

Third parties are already targeting the high end PC market and it scales down extremely well to these like minded designed consoles regardless of the power deficit. The peak of graphical technology and API is what we see on the existing PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC, we are limited by feature sets, not compute power. Scorpio being off on its own isn't going to change the API limitations, it's not going to change the graphical feature sets of the hardware that developers are limited to.

This is why it is important to own and understand certain things before talking about them, otherwise like your post you're just taking shots in the dark.

Scaleability and developing for the least common denominator, instead of actively leveraging the unique strengths of a machine, are exactly what I am arguing against. This is why it is important to not be a douche and at least try to understand the other person's point, otherwise your post just comes off as needlessly hostile when I'm actually trying to engage you in a proper discussion.

Okay, this is super off topic, so I won't get into this much, but:

• I have never made any thread with the words 'smear campaign' in the title. That was an allegation by dynamitecop here when I was simply making a thread discussing how badly the Xbox One version of Just Cause 3 was running, and I ran with it ironically because of its absurd hilarity.
• Sony were never planning on forbidding used games- I already disproved this in so many threads last year. But the general narrative goes, Sony were planning on blocking used games, but said nothing, and when Microsoft announced their plans to so much backlash, they changed their minds. That's not what happened. As early as February 21 2013, before the Xbox One has even been announced, Sony had committed to allowing used games to play on PS4.
• Right, straddling the console with the Kinect and hampered specs was definitely a bad move. Even with the removal of Kinect, the R&D that went into it instead of into researching better specs for the system, continue to haunt it to this day.

In the end, I had even begun to come back on board with Xbox when the Xbox One S released- it looked so much like the kind of console I would be interested in and Microsoft had begun to make all the right moves again. But the cancellation of Scalebound has soured me quite a bit, so I'm once again back in wait and watch mode. Hopefully Microsoft wins me over at E3.

Well but you do have the law of diminishing returns. When the scorpio releases devs won't be pushed anymore to have 1080p or 900p, they can easily even go sub 720p and cut corners on all sorts of levels, lightning , shadows, view distance, antialiasing. I mean even destiny runs on the x360. It won't be that easy to take jumps on graphical fidelity like that either, because of the law of diminishing returns. Not to mention the extra production costs.

Still you're right that this will hold back the scorpio, but if sales are good, exclusives won't be that far behind. The scorpio could have one thing that will be exclusive at release though and that's vr and ar. It's also pretty much the only thing that's on the horizon for the next level, I mean what would you expect from a next gen, with the x360 and ps3 you had physics, there's nothing like that now.

Microsoft could still change position as well, when the scorpio releases the xbox one is four years in.

@charizard1605: So you agree, the problem is Microsoft.

Micrsooft worked Japanese developers incredibly hard in the opening years of the Xbox 360. Ace Combat 6 was an exclusive on the 360. That's unreal for a series that had started on the PS1.

Reality didn't agree with Microsoft's approach. Japanese sales figures were terrible for the 360. They shifted focus to the North American and European market. It got them through the last gen in a comfortable 2nd place.

Everything went wrong with Microsoft this gen though.

@commander: Diminishing returns are definitely a thing- but I'm not even necessarily talking about graphics here. Imagine, as an example, a next generation Fallout or Elder Scrolls game, that can actually have a seamless, persistent, fully interactive open world with permanence- right now, open world games either achieve seamlessness (like Witcher 3) or permanence and interactivity (like Fallout 4). No games do both.

I'm thinking about how much better and more meaningful game experiences themselves will become if developers begin targeting a higher end spec than what we are stuck with right now. Graphics in and of themselves are not something I'm that bothered about- that should be clear from the fact that I am arguing against the Scorpio being a mid generation upgrade exactly because that will render it just a bunch of graphical improvements and nothing more.

Yeah, Microsoft took the wrong lessons from the Xbox 360's success is all I can say, and they have spent the last three years fighting the fires that those wrong lessons (which then led to the Xbox One's troubled birth) caused.

It's a way to milk the last batch of lems left before MS discontinues the xbox brand and moves to PC 100%

I understand your point, it's just fundamentally flawed as high end PC's are already targeted thus relative game builds, textures, assets, effects, models etc will already be in the development pipeline with minor tuning needed to adjust them for Scorpio.

Its the biggest flop in the history of gaming. Or in short Flopio.

Ehhh... most major multiplatform games seem to target the PS4, and then scale up and down from there.

I guess I just want developers to start spending some more time leveraging the unique strengths of each of these machines, but I guess the modern AAA development scene doesn't allow for that :/

@charizard1605:

I guess I just want developers to start spending some more time leveraging the unique strengths of each of these machines, but I guess the modern AAA development scene doesn't allow for that :/

What you want makes very little fiscal sense though. The funds made from exclusive Scorpio or Pro titles wont justify the cost of development. Its high time gamers get in touch with reality. People like being able to go to work, bring home a steady paycheck and feed and house their families. Nobody is going to do what we want because what we want serves our wants and nobody's needs.