Microsoft Ends its E3 Presser By Announcing Yet Another New Console - Project Scorpio

[Sewa_Yunga]

Scorpio? Is that some comic book character or a band or film or something?

I'm pretty certain its a professional wrestler from WWF's Attitude Era.

Nah, it's the S/M gimp villain from Farscape

If you ever read the Alex Rider novels its also their counterpart to SPECTRE.

It's also a nickname of the player character from the Just Cause series.

So, if it doesn't come with a multi-hookshot, a redeployable parachute and a wingsuit, I'll be very disappointed and therefore not buy it.

 

[Josh123914]

For fuck sake Microsoft! I JUST [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.939391-Microsoft-Shows-Off-New-Xbox-One-S-to-Kick-Off-E3-Presser#23686014] gave you mad props (kids still say that nowadays, right? I'm cool!) for not going "NEW 3DS" bullshit on us and then you go "NEW 3DS" bullshit on us.

I've got a feeling that all of these attempts at incremental upgrades have a better-than-evens chance to go "NEW 3DS".

The problem with the "NEW 3DS" was that it appeared largely indistinguishable from the 3DS. It was near-identical except for a slight hardware boost. Which meant nobody saw any real point in buying them. Who was the "NEW 3DS" for? Nintendo never actually worked that out, they just shoved them out of the door with minimal developer support out of the gate. Which meant nobody bought them. Which meant no developers jumped on board because why design something for a console that has a tiny install base when the near-identical but slightly less powerful predecessor has millions of units sold? Which meant nobody bought them, because no games. Etc etc...


It really feels like Sony and Microsoft are blindly walking down the same route here; without noticing that Nintendo, who was forging ahead of them, has fallen off a cliff. Who are these consoles FOR?

They're not substantially different to the current consoles. So they're not really a 'new generation'. They're not even being marketed as a 'new generation', which is something that they might have tried; although doing so would probably have been suicidal as far as customers go (given how relatively new the PS4 and XBOne are).

They're being billed as for 4k gaming. Okay, I can buy that...but surely there can't be THAT many people with 4k TVs? But wait...60FPS 4k potential is good for VR, right?

Okay, lets run with that...about the only thing I can start to understand is if these are intended to be their "VR boxes". But if this is the case then VR on consoles is pretty much DOA unless these new consoles somehow manage to pull their price point way, way down to make it worth people replacing their existing consoles. People who want to do VR properly are going to get a powerful PC rig and a decent VR system. The 'hook' for Sony's Morpheus and Microsoft's Oculus team-up is that its a way to get a relatively cheaper VR experience...which isn't going to work if people are going to have to shell out hundreds upon hundreds of pounds for a new system as well as hundreds for the headset and other hardware (I just read Sony's needs a camera). If the headsets don't work at least reasonably with the base console which everyone already owns then the entire project for both consoles is unlikely to work out. But if they DO work reasonably well on the base consoles...then there goes the reason for wanting to get the upgraded version in the first place.

Not to mention anyone with a PC and with any involvement in PC gaming is subsequently more likely to just go 'screw it' and look into upgrading their PC for VR rather than faffing about buying an expensive new console.

So who else might it be for? Devs? Then you're back to the NEW 3DS discussion. Why would developers back a console that's only an incremental upgrade to an existing one when the existing one has a huge install base already? But for the sake of argument lets say they do get on board...if lots of devs get on board making exclusives for these new consoles then its basically a new generation...and we cycle back to customers getting annoyed because they literally just bought a new console a couple years ago.

None of it appears to make any sense.

This, basically.

Unless Nintendo actually contracted developers to do so, nobody was making games for the New 3DS when so much more money could be made with the regular model without that much of a difference in processing power.
The Xbone is going to run into the same difficulties, and I can already tell they'll throw the scare into half of us by making, I dunno, the next Tomb Raider a BoneS exclusive, or some mode in Halo 6 only accessible through it, but it'll all be for show.

I think Microsoft are disappointed in sales figures, so to tide us over for the next console generation have created this contraption, that will make its money back by diehard fans and christmas gift kids buying it because it exists.

 

[DrunkOnEstus]

It features a GPU that offers six teraflops of power, which is slightly better than a GTX 980, but slightly less than the GTX Titan. It's still a whopping 33% less than the new GTX 1080. Scorpio will also feature an eight-core CPU, and will support 4K gaming at 60 frames per second, as well as VR.

I've got some bad news for Microsoft. Slightly better than a GTX 980 is not going to give you 4k 60fps.

This is so true that I added a couple of words to make it clear that they claimed it, and not that I was agreeing with it.

I have a feeling that it has an internal upscaler to 4K, the way a lot of X1 games are 720p or 900p but present at 1080p because of the upscaler. What I wonder is whether the level of pixels beyond 1080p present such diminishing returns that one wouldn't notice a native 1080p image upscaled to a 4K HDTV, or worse that artificially quadrupling the number of pixels from 1080 to 4K will present a ton of artifacts in a worse way than the 720p-1080p upscaler does. Add in some of that vaseline "next-gen" depth of field, motion blur, chromatic abberation, and FXAA on a 4X upscaled image and you have yourself a horrible way of showing off your new 4K TV to your friends.

OT: So it sounds like I can pick up an RX 480 8GB for $225 and be on the curve 18 months from now, which is great to hear and much appreciated AMD.

Edit: And yeah I can see this pissing a lot of people off, I remember the 32X back in the day, but at least in this case the "32X" equivalent is suppposed to work on the original X1, so what's the point? You can't have bigger worlds or more advanced AI or make a generational leap in gaming because this isn't a generational leap and isn't being advertised as one. So if you don't get one you'll be like those poor sods playing Perfect Dark on the N64 back in the day without the expansion pak, missing 70% of the features or fidelity.

I can see how their hands are tied, but they shot themselves in the foot. The PS360 gen had run on for far too long, but they wussed out on the specs because of the doom and gloom for consoles in 2011-2012 and the future being mobile/handheld/PC or whatever. So those millions of people who bought a PS4/X1 got to play proper versions of some of their favorite games from the last gen (Last of Us, Master Chief Collection, GTA V, Diablo 3, Tomb Raider, Dark Souls 2) and games that could have still been played if they held on (Dragon Age:Inquisition, Shadow of Mordor, Alien Isolation, Destiny). NONE of those 10 games require an 8th gen console (unless you want all your Halo shoved together and kind of broke). So is this the 8th 1/2 gen? Are they just really easier PCs now and there aren't gens? I guess I'm glad I got to play Bloodborne when I did, but if I could have saved my money and gotten to play it on a better machine without horrific frametimes I would have done it in hindsight, so I guess I'm a little pissed too, and I primarily game on PC.

 

[Nurb]

So VR is the new motion controls

 

[deadish]

Wait ... how many consoles are they releasing ...

This is only causing consumer confusion.

 

[Naldan]

If both of these fail, the biggest company that loses will be AMD. Which will be desastrous.