Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

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So no different to PS4 Pro then except Sony didn't commit their first parties to native 4K (or 1800p or 1440p or any specific resolution at all) when they may have preferred spending the GPU power elsewhere. It feels like the marketing people at Microsoft call the shots, not the technical people.
I suspect more or less, perhaps hitting 4K more often than their competitor should it come to that.
 
Probably not, except for everybody would say that VR sucks on Xbone and PS4 is super duper more powerful than Xbone, just look at the VR. Its logs for the flames ;)

Maybe so, but people could still experience VR by only buying a headset to complement their console. Then, once Scorpio launches, they'd see a more substantial difference than there is between the PS4 and the 4Pro.

Even just tactically, it would have made sense to support: get people to buy the Oculus Rift when the PS4Pro and PSVR launch, preventing them from buying either of those devices, and get them geared up for higher fidelity VR once the Scorpio arrives. One big, expensive purchase per Christmas for the customer; one year of VR content not lost to the competition.

I have no expectation that Microsoft will follow through on their first party native 4K vow. They'll spin it in some positive (or confusing) way. They've done this before, remember the 720p MSAA TRC on 360? It would be the right thing to do, but it's shitty to promise customers something then not deliver. Some people won't care, some people will care but make excuses for the oathbreaker (I've been watching Game of Thrones season 6!), others will be annoyed.

It's better to avoid putting yourself in this position in the first place. Treat your customers with respect, don't promise things you can't deliver after they've bought in already.

True, and it does affect some people's decision. But most people are fickle and won't remember a vague technical promise made a couple of years before the console launched.

They may have cost themselves a few forum dwellers like us, but not much beyond that. Personally, I'll never touch a Microsoft product again after what they did to my fellow Europeans at Nokia. Unfortunately, most people I talk to don't even know about it.
 
PlayStation wins by default on a global basis because of it's brand. If Xbox wants to come close it has to over-perform in the North America/UK/Australia (aka English speaking markets) like it did with Xbox 360.
 
Microsoft's self-inflicted problem is they mocked PS4 Pro's checkerboard solution as not "native" 4K yet we know from their own leaked white paper the are also exploring/promoting this for devs having already committed too "Any games we’re making that we’re launching in the Scorpio time frame, we’re making sure they can natively render at 4K."

So well done for creating that PR dilemma, Microsoft. They can waste GPU powerful on native 4K for their own games to meet their commitment or look like dicks for doing exactly what Sony did having mocked them for it. :nope:

That said, would there be such a PR dilemma if there's a 4K native mode that runs at 30 FPS and a 4K "alternative" mode that runs at 60 FPS?

Or a 4K native mode with the same graphical effects and quality as XBO, and a 4K "alternative" mode with much enhanced graphical effects and quality compared to the XBO?

If both options are presented to the user when running the game, the PR message is still met. For purists that want native, they can have it. For people that just want a good looking game, they have it.

I don't know how feasible that would be for a rendering engine, so I'm doubtful they'd do it, but it would be an interesting option. Especially for like-for-like comparisons of alternative methods of achieving 4K.

Regards,
SB
 
Have they mentioned framerate? I don't believe so. They sure have used "true 4k" a lot though.
Mainly around 4K.
MS has outs when it comes to bad marketing. I assume the bad mouthing sony came from this Eurogamer interview with Albert Penello.
He does not suggest every game will be 4K.
He does suggest 4.2 TF is not enough to do true 4K.
Last line sort of sums it up.

Granted everyone will take everything out of context because media and shit talk is king, but I think they have outs.
Microsoft is waging war on Sony with comments about how the Xbox One Scorpio measures up against the PS4 Pro.

Microsoft believes the PS4 Pro - which features 4.2 teraflops of GPU power - won't be able to handle true 4K and that the Xbox One Scorpio is aiming higher.

"I think there are a lot of caveats they're giving customers right now around 4K," Microsoft's Albert Penello told Eurogamer.

"They're talking about checkerboard rendering and up-scaling and things like that.

"There are just a lot of asterisks in their marketing around 4K, which is interesting because when we thought about what spec we wanted for Scorpio, we were very clear we wanted developers to take their Xbox One engines and render them in native, true 4K.

"That was why we picked the number, that's why we have the memory bandwidth we have, that's why we have the teraflops we have, because it's what we heard from game developers was required to achieve native 4K."

The Xbox One Scorpio will feature 6 teraflops of GPU, something Penello believes will give developers more options.

"They're going to be able to decide to take that six teraflops of power and do what they think is best for their game. But I know that 4.2 teraflops is not enough to do true 4K.

"So, I feel like our product aspired a little bit higher, and we will have fewer asterisks around the 4K experiences we deliver on our box."
 
Have they mentioned framerate? I don't believe so. They sure have used "true 4k" a lot though.
They did mention there's no reason to buy scorpio unless you have a 4K TV, so no frame rate or graphics advantages other than resolution. They said allowing scorpio exclusives after 3-4 years is "not their plan", so no rolling generations.

The only way to trust anything they say is by being extremely selective, or interpret a lot. :runaway:
 
They said the same about the XB1.

If they had gone for a Zen CPU they would have already said it. And now they must know what CPU is inside Scorpio if they want to sell it this year.

Best bet is Jaguar (or Puma) at ~2.5ghz or so.

That statement clearly highlights a lack of understanding how partnerships and communication work. AMD won't be able to tout the Zen design win for Scorpio until MS announces it, and MS likely is constrained about disclosing Zen in scorpio until post-Zen launch.

All available evidence points to Zen, or some derivative, being in Scorpio. There is zero evidence for it not being there.
 
I assume the bad mouthing sony came from this Eurogamer interview with Albert Penello.
I believe 'True 4K' first appeared in Aaron Greenberg's tweet. It's still on Microsoft's website but the white paper leaks suggest that may be edited out at some point, like they edited their reveal video. Seriously, what are Microsoft doing!?!?

He does not suggest every game will be 4K.

Nobody is claiming otherwise. :???:

Granted everyone will take everything out of context because media and shit talk is king, but I think they have outs.

If by 'out of context' you mean believing what Microsoft say then sure, it's "out of context". It's not a minor technical thing that people will forget, Microsoft made big of this to the press and thought it amusing to take some jabs at Sony over checkerboarding and true/native 4K. The press will certainly remember and no doubt Sony may decide to have a little fun with Microsoft if they fail to deliver.

We all know how unfair the press is to Microsoft so I don't see what they have to lose!
 
For that Tweet, however, only 1 game has to release with native 4K and PR claims have been met. :p

True, but when you have to argue your PR is 'technically' correct* and not broadly representative of your product, then I think you have a serious communication problem. Microsoft can't have much goodwill left to lose: early death of OG Xbox, RRoD, TV (which in most countries was barely supported), Kinect, their messaging in general. Right now, I genuinely believe Sony is winning only because their competition is borderline incompetent. :yep2:
 
I believe 'True 4K' first appeared in Aaron Greenberg's tweet. It's still on Microsoft's website but the white paper leaks suggest that may be edited out at some point, like they edited their reveal video. Seriously, what are Microsoft doing!?!?
Yea, I'm not sure why they let that guy tweet. Ever.

Nobody is claiming otherwise. :???:
Though, I assumed you were referring to MS not putting a stop to that type of messaging from getting around when they announced Scorpio/4Pro reveal.

We all know how unfair the press is to Microsoft so I don't see what they have to lose!
Sony doesn't care ;) let's face it, it probably indirectly helps Sony out anyway in terms of marketing. You get all these forum people upset and mad and stuff. Lines are crossed, people are infuriated. And then you get a bunch of people who probably never heard of or understand what all this is about, and then they get involved and educated.

etc.

There's an interesting article I just read; perhaps this might be appropriate?
http://observer.com/2017/02/i-helpe...aybook-you-should-stop-playing-right-into-it/
You’re worried about “normalizing” their behavior when in fact, that’s the one thing they don’t want to happen. The key tactic of alternative or provocative figures is to leverage the size and platform of their “not-audience” (i.e. their haters in the mainstream) to attract attention and build an actual audience. Let’s say 9 out of 10 people who hear something Milo says will find it repulsive and juvenile. Because of that response rate, it’s going to be hard for someone like Milo to market himself through traditional channels. His potential audience is too spread out, and doesn’t have that much in common. He can’t advertise, he can’t find them one by one. It’s just not going to scale.

But let’s say he can acquire massive amounts of negative publicity by pissing off people in the media? Well now all of a sudden someone is absorbing the cost of this inefficient form of marketing for him. If a CNN story reaches 100,000 people, that’s 90,000 people all patting themselves on the back for how smart and decent they are. They’re just missing the fact that the 10,000 new people that just heard about Milo for the first time. The same goes for when you angrily share on Facebook some godawful thing one of these people has said. The vast majority of your friends rush to agree, but your younger cousin has a dark switch in his brain go on for the first time.
 
Though, I assumed you were referring to MS not putting a stop to that type of messaging from getting around when they announced Scorpio/4Pro reveal.
Nope.

Sony doesn't care ;) let's face it, it probably indirectly helps Sony out anyway in terms of marketing.

Sony certainly don't care, but that wouldn't stop them taking the piss since Microsoft fired the first shots. May I bring your attention to their E3 conference following the reveal. That is how you do PR.

 
True, but when you have to argue your PR is 'technically' correct* and not broadly representative of your product, then I think you have a serious communication problem. Microsoft can't have much goodwill left to lose: early death of OG Xbox, RRoD, TV (which in most countries was barely supported), Kinect, their messaging in general. Right now, I genuinely believe Sony is winning only because their competition is borderline incompetent. :yep2:

I wasn't aware that "True 4k" was a technical term.
 
I wonder just how much of a big deal the pre reveal message will matter to the wider audience once e3 happens?
that's when they need to get message straight.

has there been any developments with dynamic resolution, maybe adding a temporal aspect to it?
and if so is there anything in newer arch that could help facilitate it?
 
It would have been smart to just say generally it can do "4K gaming". That way 4K could mean some games are 4K but not all, 4k could mean dynamic res 4K, 4k could mean 4K checkerboard/some other technique.
 
It would have been smart to just say generally it can do "4K gaming". That way 4K could mean some games are 4K but not all, 4k could mean dynamic res 4K, 4k could mean 4K checkerboard/some other technique.
While more accurate that doesn't differentiate Scorpio from PS4 Pro. Scorpio is a year behind Pro and what you just wrote is also true of Pro which was launching within weeks. Why wait for Scorpio when Pro does that now?
 
While more accurate that doesn't differentiate Scorpio from PS4 Pro. Scorpio is a year behind Pro and what you just wrote is also true of Pro which was launching within weeks. Why wait for Scorpio when Pro does that now?

well I guess if they launch one game that does native 4K they could technically say whatever they want.
 
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