Microsoft XBOX (XBox One X / Project Scorpio) - Prerelease News and Rumours

[Shifty Geezer]

The problem with 'the response' is that it's the same strange vagueness that always crops up in these interviews. You rarely get a clear answer to anything. eg. from the same interview asked about XB1S having a slight performance boost (it has, he could have said 'yes' and explained it's very small):

You announced Xbox One S. I hear there's extra processing power...

Phil Spencer: I keep hearing this as well. First thing for us with Xbox One S is making sure we have a great entry-level price, because price is critical. It's $299, smaller design, great-looking design, it plays all your Xbox One games, your accessories work. If you think about the really critical things it has to go do, we needed to tick all those boxes. That was the product.

Then we looked at what was happening, and we said there were some opportunities for us to do a little more. With upgrading the HDMI technology in the box, we're able to support 4K video streaming. So we said, okay, if we're going to support 4K video streaming, let's also put a UHD Blu-ray drive in there for 4K disc, so you can watch video in 4K. Just because where we were in technology, we saw that and we said, okay, let's make that possible.

From a design standpoint, it was designed to play Xbox One games exactly the same way your existing Xbox One does.

But I hear there is a small processing boost.

Phil Spencer: The one definitive feature that's different is HDR. So, with the increased HDMI capability, it has the ability to support High Dynamic Range. I will say - and I've been asked about this - and I'm not trying to dodge the question, you should expect it to play your games the same way an Xbox One does. We did not design this to play Xbox One games better than the original Xbox One console.

We've gone through - even on the existing hardware - multiple hardware iterations on the inside. There will be certain decisions that are made either for cost reasons or other supply chain reasons that can result in slightly different performance, whether it's disc drive throughput... everything's not always pegged at exactly the same number, but honestly, do not buy this box if you think you're buying it to play your Xbox One games better, because it was not designed to go do that. It was designed to play your Xbox One games exactly the way your Xbox One does.

I don't want anybody to think this is somehow a performance boost for Xbox One games. That's why we said HDR on-screen, and that's what we want to be explicit about. Outside of that, you should expect your Xbox One games to run exactly the same.

Look how much total bollocks there is in that answer, where the thought process isn't 'what's the right answer to these questions to tell them what they want to know' but 'how do we communicate our message within this framework of them asking questions?'

So really, don't try to read too much into the phrasing, because the phrasing is speaking PR and not English.

 

[mpg1]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-06-15-xbox-boss-phil-spencer-the-big-interview

This all but confirms the 12GB GDDR5 imo. He basically acknowledges they knew the motherboard render would be speculated on. No way the higher ups at Microsoft would intentionally mislead.

 

[Rodéric]

 

[AlNom]

.

 

[MrFox]

Maybe the presentation was "Exclusive | Holiday 2016", not the games.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

No way the higher ups at Microsoft would intentionally mislead.

Intentionally misleading prospective customers would indeed be foolish but sometimes just plans change. The time between that interview and launch is going to be around 18 months and a lot can change in a year and a half. Microsoft went from "Kinect is core to Xbox" (February 2014) to removing Kinect (May 2014) in 10 weeks.

 

[Jay]

Unlike the specs they've given, they've not said the memory, so it's not misleading, just poor pr

 

[Deleted member 11852]

Unlike the specs they've given, they've not said the memory, so it's not misleading, just poor pr

It's certainly poor communication but not necessarily poor PR. I've been critical of Xbox comms this gen, particularly Phil Spencer who will rarely will give a straight answer even to things which are not contentious but the purpose of PR is very different to clear communication. If a company is in a disadvantaged position, it's often advantageous to be ambiguous and disingenuous. PR is equal parts reality and perception.

It may not be Phil Spencer's fault. I can well imagine that inside a company like Microsoft that execs are subordinate to the PR, which is just a sign of how important PR is perceived compared to actual management and leadership skills.

 

[iroboto]

It's certainly poor communication but not necessarily poor PR. I've been critical of Xbox comms this gen, particularly Phil Spencer who will rarely will give a straight answer even to things which are not contentious but the purpose of PR is very different to clear communication. If a company is in a disadvantaged position, it's often advantageous to be ambiguous and disingenuous. PR is equal parts reality and perception.

It may not be Phil Spencer's fault. I can well imagine that inside a company like Microsoft that execs are subordinate to the PR, which is just a sign of how important PR is perceived compared to actual management and leadership skills.

To add onto this one:

The longer a company goes silent about a product, the more it's subject to change. A big part of the reason they want to stop leaks is because 18 months is a long time for things to change, and committing to them early, or leaking that information can and will undoubtedly cause disappointment.

They've been deliberately vague around Scorpio communications, and it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's not necessarily a great thing. It's more like they will reveal and announce when all is set in stone and ready to go. I don't see a play here to deceive the public.
It's:

6 TF
8 CPU Cores
320 of bandwidth

And that's all they've decided to commit to tell us. That's also probably what they're committed to deliver.

 

[mrcorbo]

I think Scorpio having a hybrid storage setup with a user-accessible m.2 slot for the SSD cache drive would be pretty great.

 

[MrFox]

I think Scorpio having a hybrid storage setup with a user-accessible m.2 slot for the SSD cache drive would be pretty great.

Yeah I believe a hybrid solution is the best of both worlds, replaceable even better. If it's automatic cache management, the stock SKU wouldn't need a very big cache (128GB?), and power users could still put a 512GB. Data could be shuffled based on most recently played, and even add a manual "sticky" option.

We're predicting something similar for years, it's just never happening.

 

[mpg1]

Well in that article Phil Spencer said they knew people would speculate on the memory with the renders...so yeah that would be totally misleading to knowingly do that imo. I don't care if it's officially announced or not.

Of course if it's more no will complain...if it ends up being less then 12GB... that would be a bad/dumb move to have put those renders out.

 

[Michellstar]

Intentionally misleading prospective customers would indeed be foolish but sometimes just plans change. The time between that interview and launch is going to be around 18 months and a lot can change in a year and a half. Microsoft went from "Kinect is core to Xbox" (February 2013) to removing Kinect (May 2013) in 10 weeks.

It wasn`t ten weeks, It was the year later when Kinect got unbundled. Not invalidating your reasoning though.

About the PR stuff. They entered this gen with a communication nightmare with the One, different execs giving incomplete or divergent info, a guy getting sacked for some tweets or Mattrick that got cocky at the Reveal. I quite understand that they are overcautious now, better safe than sorry.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Maybe there's been less communication because there may be changes to the specs.

Is there any hard reason why Scorpio's SoC won't be 10FF?

a guy getting sacked for some tweets

#dealwithit Adam Orth?

 

[Deleted member 11852]

It wasn`t ten weeks, It was the year later when Kinect got unbundled. Not invalidating your reasoning though.

Kinect was removed as standard six months after launch and a few months after Microsoft were doubling down on Kinect being standard and not offering an Xbox bundle without it.

November 2013: Xbox One launched
February 2014: Microsoft were saying "Kinect was integral" upon calls to remove it.
May 2014: It's going.

That was ten weeks between those two statements.

 

[Michellstar]

Kinect was removed as standard six months after launch and a few months after Microsoft were doubling down on Kinect being standard and not offering an Xbox bundle without it.

November 2013: Xbox One launched
February 2014: Microsoft were saying "Kinect was integral" upon calls to remove it.
May 2014: It's going.

That was ten weeks between those two statements.

You wrote this: "Microsoft went from "Kinect is core to Xbox" (February 2013) to removing Kinect (May 2013) in 10 weeks." I didn´t check the links

But anyway, As you said, plans change, even the head of the division XD

 

[Deleted member 11852]

You wrote this: "Microsoft went from "Kinect is core to Xbox" (February 2013) to removing Kinect (May 2013) in 10 weeks." I didn´t check the links

Yah, 2013 should have been 2014. Xbox One wasn't announced until May 22nd 2013. In 2014 it took just ten weeks for a radical change in strategy, product features and pricing. And if Microsoft feel the target RAM pool for Scorpio is off, they'll make changes. They mentioned Scorpio at E3 2016 before Sony had detailed Pro and that may have changed things.

 

[mrcorbo]

Kinect was removed as standard six months after launch and a few months after Microsoft were doubling down on Kinect being standard and not offering an Xbox bundle without it.

November 2013: Xbox One launched
February 2014: Microsoft were saying "Kinect was integral" upon calls to remove it.
May 2014: It's going.

That was ten weeks between those two statements.

To be fair, two different people are being quoted there, though. Maybe the head of PR for the UK wasn't necessarily up on all of the latest discussions back at HQ? I seem to remember one of the principals for SCEE being rather publicly out of the loop around some price cut or new model launch or something back during the PS3 generation.

And also, MS literally went from having Kinect so integrated that the XBOne could not even work without a Kinect connected to not even including one in every SKU over that same time-frame, so it wasn't just policy that had to change there. They had to actually re-engineer the system software away from being totally reliant on the fact that a Kinect would always be connected and active. You can't do that in 10 weeks, but maybe you don't want to hurt your sales of systems while you work on it by telling everyone that that SKU is coming.

 

[Nisaaru]

MS declared around mid July 2013 that Kinect won't be mandatory anymore because of the PR and sales blowback. I've never plugged Kinect into my launch console and the UI was usable without it. Kinect has always been a political and marketing agenda, not some technical one.

 

[mrcorbo]

MS declared around mid July 2013 that Kinect won't be mandatory anymore because of the PR and sales blowback. I've never plugged Kinect into my launch console and the UI was usable without it. Kinect has always been a political and marketing agenda, not some technical one.

The UI was very much designed around using Kinect. It took quite some time for them to fix all of the usability issues that the quick move away from the Kinect-driven design caused.