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While the Xbox One S will be taking on 4K Blu-Ray and video streaming this year, Microsoft has something much bigger planned for 2017. Today at the end of its E3 press conference, Microsoft officially announced Project Scorpio, a more powerful Xbox, which comes with a new CPU and a much more powerful GPU with 6TFLOPS of compute power, aiming to bring 4K gaming to consoles.
Project Scorpio will once again feature an eight-core CPU, but the real star of the show seems to be the new GPU, which Phil Spencer claims will deliver a “premier console gaming experience” capable of driving “true 4K gaming and high fidelity VR”.
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Project Scorpio will join the current Xbox line-up and be compatible with all Xbox One games and accessories. On the flip side, future Xbox games will also run on both consoles to ensure that nobody gets left behind.
Microsoft was keen to push its 6TFLOPS of compute performance, which at first glance rivals even that of the GTX 980Ti, according to this chart from PCPer. However, there is more to GPU performance than the amount of teraflops it can push so it's hard to make any real performance estimates based on that number alone.
Microsoft still has a year or so to keep developing its hardware though, so by the end of next year, we may have our first 4K gaming capable console, though developers will probably continue having to stick to 30 frames per second. Either way, we will find out more closer to the time when more developers start working on games for the new hardware.
KitGuru Says: Microsoft's Project Scorpio won't be coming until late 2017 and right now, we really don't know a lot about the hardware or its true capabilities aside from the amount of teraflops it can push. However, the focus on delivering 4K gaming is exciting, particularly in the console space.
So basically, developers will in the future have to develop for two architectures if they want to develop for Xbox, and early adapters of the One will not have a premier experience. Life cycle of the current gen console: 4 years. What’s next, buying a new console every two years, but with a subscription for Xbox Live/PS+ so you don’t have to pay a lot when you buy it?
It will still be the x86 architecture so theoretically, it should be as easy as cranking up the graphics settings on a PC game. In the future, developers will need to build their games with two graphics presets, a ‘base’ mode and then a higher detail mode depending on which console you are running on.
In the long run, this is the best way forward for console gaming in my opinion, the last console cycle was so slow and left gaming stagnant for ages. Instead of waiting a decade for a decent upgrade, it makes way more sense to keep pushing forward every few years with better performance and thanks to the architecture, all games should carry over and be playable on newer hardware along the way, which is great because backwards compatibility can be an issue on console.
The point of consoles has always been that once you buy one, you get the exact same experience as everyone else, and are set for the next seven years or so.
More likely, Sony and MS just screwed up and didn’t account for 4k and in particular VR. Now just a few years in they are scrambling to correct this blunder.
Either that, or it’s the final move towards modular consoles, i.e., PCs (or with fixed specs, i.e., Steam Machines).
That’s an incredibly subjective statement, a lot of developers and the community have been loud about disagreeing with the move to “upgraded consoles”. As much as you want to say “as easy as cranking up a few settings”, people who own the older console will feel left if they can’t afford the premium new one and people with the new are bottlenecked by the older. I completely disagree with this, if I wanted to upgrade, I would just buy a PC and this goes against what a console stands for. I don’t believe this will be a good start for Microsoft or Sony.
My opinion; I happily own a PS4 for exclusives and the rest is up to my PC. Please think about the majority, not everyone has the money to splash again.
Actually, both manufacturers are committed to selling the base models for years to come, so the life cycle is well beyond 4 years. Also, we are looking at 3-4 year iterations in my opinion, not 2 years.
Also, with the using AMD x86 and GCN still, it is not a significant change to the hardware in terms of development, especially since the same APIs will remain in use, just with improvements… but they always improve the APIs even within a non-iterated generation. So while there will be some extra work, I think Andrew House was right when he said Neo would involve a ‘small but manageable” amount of extra work and the same is true of Scorpio. bare in mind that games are already developed for high end visuals and then scaled back as necessary during optimisation (even on PC). So, at least for AAA studios, Neo and Scorpio will simply require less scaling back than the existing consoles, not extra assets being made.
EDIT: And as one developer recently said, it is still *WAY* easier than developing for PC where you have to account for effectively infinite hardware combinations.
Yeah, the last generation was too long. And technology is moving faster now so consoles will hold gaming back if they don’t improve faster than the old 5-6 years let alone the 7-8 of last generation. Also, I don’t think big generational leaps are possible anymore. You actually get bigger improvements overall if you iterate. it is the avalanche effect. One iteration may not be a massive leap like a generation is, but two adds up to more as you are iterating on the iteration until there are enough snowflakes for an avalanche. Except these iterations are big enough to be more they are dropping rocks not snowflakes so the avalanche won’t take as long as with snowflakes.
It is also easier on their bank balances to do smaller and thus cheaper iterations as they can spread the costs out more rather than do big and therefore expensive leaps forwards every several years.
TLDR; I agree that it is the best way forward and doing so will benefit gaming as a whole, not just consoles gaming.
People should not worry about if someone else has something better. They should care only about *if they enjoy using the device* and more importantly *if they enjoy the games on it*. And that means they should think about upgrading only if the visual difference would, in their opinion, be enough of an upgrade to their pleasure levels to justify the cost, not because someone else has something better.
And those with the better ones look only at if they enjoy the device and its games. If they do does any theoretical bottleneck really matter that much? it shouldn’t if they are enjoying themselves.
There is no “have to upgrade” with either PC or the new consoles. In all three cases it is an *option*. Options for consumers is not a bad thing. It is good, as consumer interests vary, even with consoles. More choices means more interests are catered to, which is good.
EDIT: This way they are thinking about a wider audience than just “the majority” and the wider the audience catered to the better.
They are not scrambling. These devices take a few years to develop since they have to redesign them and that means many iterations were thought up and tested in the labs… iterations that will never be seen as only the final iteration is seen. Besides, the SoCs are semi-custom not drop in PC parts, so they take a few years of R&D with the same iterative development process.
thats called the apple market.
thats a very logical way to look at things, but most people don’t buy based off of logic. personally i’d be pissed if i bought an xbox1 a week ago and this news came out.
True, not everyone is logical like that. I wish they were though.
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I know they didn’t just think of this last year. Maybe scrambling is the wrong word, but I meant that they would never have launched these upgrades if they had accounted for VR/4k properly.
So not a big worry for developers; still leaves the consumer side of it. How will the experience be for old iteration consumers? Early adapters always took a bit of a risk, but now the they definitely won’t get the premier experience. Unless they invest another $400 or something.
Is that what we should expect in the future?
Thinking about the majority of your playerbase is incredibly important and this decision does the opposite. I totally agree with a lot of what you say, improving on what they have for a better experience would have been the right thing; take the minor tweaks on console generations – less power usage, bumped clock rates are enough for people to replace their older consoles should they want.
No one can answer that definitively until we see games demonstrated on the old and new systems
I think we should remember that console version wasn’t really getting the premier experience to begin with being that most games are cut down version of the same game that runs on a PC, what these new consoles do offer is a choice in having a better experience for gamers that want it.
The only real worry is if Sony and Microsoft start playing the exclusive card later down the line which they wont early on but might later on to sell more of the new consoles, either way, looking at how well games can scale on PC over a wide margin of hardware, it shouldn’t be a problem doing the same on Consoles, in other words, you should be able to get the same game on a few variation of consoles without too many problems.
Or better yet think of the *entire* player base.
PC has been an afterthought for years. Developers primarily develop for consoles and port to PC. No surprise as consoles is where the money’s at. And we’ve seen horrible things on PC, launched frequently a lot worse than on consoles. Only specialized PC developers make good use of it.
That’s true for many, well mostly publishers and developers that look at the PC as a afterthought but I do sense that’s changing lately, also there is a lot to be made from PC gamers but developers need to make an effort to get them, I’ve noticed many times then when a game is well made on the PC on release it sells well, many times comparable to the console version, I’m a prime example of a PC gamer, I rarely buy games on release because they are buggy and feel like they are still a beta product unless it’s a indie game which more often then not work from release, if I sense a game is buggy and needs a few patches to sort out, I won’t buy the game until it’s much cheaper, I know many other gamers think like that and because of it they are losing a lot of money from gamers like me and many others all because they are releasing a game in a bad state to start with, not only that it gives them a bad reputation, in the end, if they release games in a better state on release, sales will likely go up a lot, they will also get a better reputation which will likely increase sales even more.
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