Middle Generation Console Upgrade Discussion [Scorpio, 4Pro]

[ramr]

I think Phil Spencer has been fairly clear about Scorpio though.

"With Scorpio you're introducing the idea of people playing online together and against each other in competitive multiplayer, one person perhaps on Scorpio and one on Xbox One. If the Scorpio enables such things as better framerate, won't that give the Scorpio user a competitive advantage in certain games?

Phil Spencer: Obviously the game designers of our games have to think about framerate and field of view when they're designing competitive situations. We have this scenario with cross-play today, people playing games on PC and console at the same time.

On a console to console experience, when we designed Scorpio and we said 4K console, we looked at games that are running at, let's say 1080p 60 on an Xbox One, and said we want that same game to be able to run at 4K 60 on a Scorpio. We looked at the design of the games we had on Xbox One today and said, if we increase the resolution and maintain the framerate we have, could we hit that?

I think framerate's more interesting than resolution in terms of competitive gaming, and we wanted to make sure teams were able to build the 4K version of their game at the same framerate they can hit, at whatever resolution: 900 or 1K or even 720 that they're hitting on this box. So, we thought specifically about that situation and talked to developers about it."

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

So yeah while there is no mandate about resolution, you can make a 1080p Scorpio game for example, there does seem to be a mandate about keeping XB1 and Scorpio framerates similar

Im not even sure a developer would want to put in the extra work to make a Scorpio game run at 60 fps compared to 30 fps considering Scorpios install base will be minimal

There is no reason 720p can't become the default for X1 in a few years. DR3 at 720 was a better looking game to me than ANY launch game on PS4.

Alternatively, just turn off resource-hog options that add minimal image quality like shadows and AA. Both of those things make very little meaningful difference in image quality to me between none and best.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Isn't the whole point of the mid cycle upgrades is that they are for people who don't mind paying a premium (that is less than buying a pc) for better gameplay and graphics.

You throw in Zen + Vega and it will run any game for the xbox one at high resolution without breaking a sweat. But then you can craft games that aren't possible on the ps4 , ps4 pro or the xbox one. Esp if they put an 8 core 16 thread chip in there. The advancements in AI alone will be huge for games that take advantage of it. Open world games like gta 6 or fallout 5 or what have you will have much better AI for characters and they can shove more characters on screen at once. Lets also not forget destruction in game play which is lacking even today

It depends on if it's a mid-cycle refresh or if they are going for a more of a rolling cycle where there are no hard generations. Things are getting interesting because in the past unlike PC gaming, a new console generation always broke compatibility with the previous generation. If MS is moving Xbox into being a subset of Windows PCs as it appears they are doing, then compatibility will roll over from "generation" to "generation." IE - there is no need for how previous consoles defined generations and therefore there is no such thing as a mid-cycle refresh.

For example, their Surface line doesn't break software compatibility with previous generations of Surface devices. I suppose in the end it remains to be seen just how abstracted from the hardware their game VM can be going forward. If the machine is always getting more powerful, it should be possible to emulate in future machines anything that past machines did that were dropped with evolving hardware designs. And when going from one "generation" to another "generation", it should be close enough that development can be shared between those two platforms. IE - similar to PC games, except that Xbox games run in a VM so the OS for the game never changes, unlike PC gaming.

Regards,
SB

 

[Rikimaru]

There is no reason 720p can't become the default for X1 in a few years. DR3 at 720 was a better looking game to me than ANY launch game on PS4.

That's just wrong. Killzone Shadow Fall still looks good. DR3 was looking bad on launch + bad performance.

 

[BRiT]

Let's not get into the topic of personal preferences on games discussion in this thread. Thank you.

 

[eastmen]

And limit yourself to a relatively tiny audience. Those games won't happen until the 'next gen' for real where games aren't hampered by the older spec. If Scorpio is going to be a part of the next gen, then it'll need an improved CPU. If it's just for playing this gen at 4K, it can make do with a weaker CPU. I'm betting it's targeting the latter...

Those games can happen at launch. All the cloud stuff they are working on for crackdown might be able to run on a zen chip natively . All MS first party titles could also take advantage of it.

We know that premium in the console world means roughly 399$, Sony did not get enough traction with PS3, Microsoft did not get enough traction with original Xbox and XB1. If they can launch Scorpio for 399 with Zen then yes that would be fairly big. But if they charge 500 for it then we simply dont know

Neither Rockstar or Bethesda will bother spending development money on Scorpio when the competition has a 60+ million userbase. Back in the day MS could write a check for 20 million and get exclusive marketing for their console but with the difference being so massive now, most companies will just ignore that. Titanfall 2 being a recent example

Microsoft really needs to bolster their first party studios in order to showcase Scorpio to sell enough consoles to make third party devs notice.

Sony got bad traction on the ps3 because they sold a $500/$600 console that had problems keeping up visualy with a $300/$400 console and continued to do so for the whole generation.

MS put out a $500 system that had weaker specs than the $400 system.

We really don't know how a $500 premium console with industry leading graphics would do. As for Bethesda or Rockstar. Money talks and MS can fund a lot of big games if they want too and of course there is still the pc side of the equation .

 

[Megadrive1988]

the longer this debate goes on, the more I feel PS5 and XB2 are being pushed out further and further

I guess there's a possibility PS5 and XB2 could be significantly further out than the 2019-2020 time frame. Consider what technologies might be available in the 2021-2022 time frame:

*5nm process node and Extreme Ultraviolet lithography

*AMD GPU architecture successor to Navi

*another iteration of Zen+ or Zen 2 (with Zen+ itself coming in 2019 including 'Grey Hawk' APUs

*3rd generation High Bandwidth Memory / HBM3 becomes more affordable for console space than it would be in 2019-2020.

20+ TeraFlop GPUs would be a given for consoles launching in 2021-2022.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Those games can happen at launch.

It would have to be treated as a new gen then, and devs aren't going to do that without any mention of PS5.

All the cloud stuff they are working on for crackdown might be able to run on a zen chip natively . All MS first party titles could also take advantage of it.

Biggest IF of the year already achieved?? XB1 was going to use the power of the cloud, remember? Hasn't happened yet. Maybe one game is going to use it, and you posit that'll be a suitable solution for XB1 to implement more CPU demanding games? Furthermore, if the cloud can do that then Scorpio won't be needed, will it?!

We really don't know how a $500 premium console with industry leading graphics would do.

We've seen plenty of times that the more expensive console with better specs still fails. And that's on a new gen. SO we don't know what's going to happen, but I'm pretty confident Scorpio will be a limited seller like PS4 Pro simple because it's not a new gen and won't get the same sort of launch - not sales numbers nor dev interest - as a new console gen.

 

[Jubei]

As for Bethesda or Rockstar. Money talks and MS can fund a lot of big games if they want too and of course there is still the pc side of the equation .

How much are they going to pay Rockstar that would be worth more than 80+ million XB1/PS4 users? You use the traditional "Microsoft has en endless warchest" argument but they have shareholders that expect the Xbox division to make money, not be a giant blackhole.

The two biggest upcoming third party IPs have PS4 exclusive content, Destiny 2 and RDR2. Meanwhile the biggest system seller Microsoft had went from a 9-10 million blockbuster to unknown (perhaps 5-6 million) while Uncharted series went from average seller to 8,7 million for PS4.

Microsoft is in a worse position than Sony was last gen. Except they lack the strong first party titles to keep them going. They really need to focus on that

 

[iroboto]

I guess there's a possibility PS5 and XB2 could be significantly further out than the 2019-2020 time frame. Consider what technologies might be available in the 2021-2022 time frame:

*5nm process node and Extreme Ultraviolet lithography

*AMD GPU architecture successor to Navi

*another iteration of Zen+ or Zen 2 (with Zen+ itself coming in 2019 including 'Grey Hawk' APUs

*3rd generation High Bandwidth Memory / HBM3 becomes more affordable for console space than it would be in 2019-2020.

20+ TeraFlop GPUs would be a given for consoles launching in 2021-2022.

There's no doubt about that. I guess the key is what the console is for. The longer you wait, you get exponentially more power to work with. I guess the real question is for what. What do we do with all that power? Having more power won't necessarily make things look better (they will) but game budgets need to rise to meet it (the real problem with having so much excess power). It would appear that development/content creation needs to come down significantly in price and increase significantly in graphical quality to meet this level of power, at least, in my opinion.

 

[iroboto]

Those games can happen at launch. All the cloud stuff they are working on for crackdown might be able to run on a zen chip natively . All MS first party titles could also take advantage of it.



Sony got bad traction on the ps3 because they sold a $500/$600 console that had problems keeping up visualy with a $300/$400 console and continued to do so for the whole generation.

MS put out a $500 system that had weaker specs than the $400 system.

We really don't know how a $500 premium console with industry leading graphics would do. As for Bethesda or Rockstar. Money talks and MS can fund a lot of big games if they want too and of course there is still the pc side of the equation .

I think the other two posts more or less covered what I wanted to say. But I just want to reiterate the point about the unlimited war chest for MS. I'm not going to claim to have inside knowledge on their financial situation, but pretty positive that MS paid large for quite a bit of software and failed to land any significant sales on those investments. Today XBLG represents the only reason why XB is still in black and it's a large chunk of their revenue. So large that it's continually the only thing that they report on, and for good reason, it's one of (if not) the most successful subscription service that MS has (barring support contracts for enterprise software).

That being said, there's a reason why Phil continues to talk about not buying into 3rd party exclusivity anymore and doing their best to focus on their own internal groups -- it's because the money has already been sunk. There's no righting that direction, they need to now develop their internal studios to deliver high quality IPs. Part of the issue that they face is that XB first party games tend to be MP focused, and all the hype is still heavily around cinematic games. I'm sure they're working on something there, but paying for 3rd party exclusivity is going to cost them too large and is currently not worth it. Minecraft/Mojang seems like their only success so far considering all the licensing deals ontop of the software as well.

What they need is to continue to develop the newly formed studios to start putting out solid games, and it would help to have some cheaper studios crank out some high quality titles.

 

[eastmen]

It would have to be treated as a new gen then, and devs aren't going to do that without any mention of PS5.

Biggest IF of the year already achieved?? XB1 was going to use the power of the cloud, remember? Hasn't happened yet. Maybe one game is going to use it, and you posit that'll be a suitable solution for XB1 to implement more CPU demanding games? Furthermore, if the cloud can do that then Scorpio won't be needed, will it?!

We've seen plenty of times that the more expensive console with better specs still fails. And that's on a new gen. SO we don't know what's going to happen, but I'm pretty confident Scorpio will be a limited seller like PS4 Pro simple because it's not a new gen and won't get the same sort of launch - not sales numbers nor dev interest - as a new console gen.

don't assume.

They can strip destruction out of xbox one games or make them cloud enabled only like crackdown.

Cloud is happening as crackdown shows and as time has went on increasing the power of a jaguar over the internet has become easier. 3 x an 8 core jaguar at 1.75ghz is not a big task anymore. A local zen chip should have no problem doing that either.

What times have we seen that ?

 

[eastmen]

How much are they going to pay Rockstar that would be worth more than 80+ million XB1/PS4 users? You use the traditional "Microsoft has en endless warchest" argument but they have shareholders that expect the Xbox division to make money, not be a giant blackhole.

The two biggest upcoming third party IPs have PS4 exclusive content, Destiny 2 and RDR2. Meanwhile the biggest system seller Microsoft had went from a 9-10 million blockbuster to unknown (perhaps 5-6 million) while Uncharted series went from average seller to 8,7 million for PS4.

Microsoft is in a worse position than Sony was last gen. Except they lack the strong first party titles to keep them going. They really need to focus on that

Oh please , MS has paid for exclusive content in the past. Notice how when Sony got exclusive content and advertising for COD it droped like a rock and now the newest one is the weakest selling of the series ? Didn't mention that did you . But you bring up Destiny 2 and that's great for sony , perhaps it will only manage to be half as big of a cluster fuck as the first one was. Uncharted was never an average seller so I don't see what your getting at there. Uncharted 3 sold extremely well.

MS also has a ton of strong first party titles. Yes they aren't selling as well on a 30m install base as a 80m install base but that's to be expected. But Forza , halo , gears and so on are still big properties and then you have others like scalebound , sea of thieves , crackdown and so on. It also doesn't stop MS from building more big games. And for every uncharted that Sony makes they still shit out drive clubs and blood bornes. Its not like they only shit out gold as you try and make it seem.

With the most powerful console MS doesn't need to spend billions to entice developers. MS just has to spend enough to entice developers to push the envolpe on scorpio. Gamers pushed the 1080p vs 900p for ps4/ xbox one. When scorpio comes out doing native 4k vs 1080p or checkerboard upscaling on the ps4 /pro they will again beat that war drum. Downscaling for 1080p only users from 4k will also have its own set of benfits .

Then there is backwards compatibility . Xbox one games will look great at 4k but xbox 360 games will run fantastic on scorpio. Oh and don't forget a heaping of Play anywhere. Xbox one to pc to scorpio and back again to pc.


But of course things can only be rosy for Sony. Lets not forget the lack luster welcome the ps4 pro got , the problems with performance in pro games. Lets not forget all the luke warm reception for new ips during the ps4 generation. Or the fact that they have split their user base and come this fall they will have gone from the most powerful console to the weaker console. And lets not forget their constant money problems as a whole company. lets also not forget that their comeption is one of the worlds largest software companies..... But hey its all roses for sony and only an endless field of shit for MS

 

[eastmen]

I think the other two posts more or less covered what I wanted to say. But I just want to reiterate the point about the unlimited war chest for MS. I'm not going to claim to have inside knowledge on their financial situation, but pretty positive that MS paid large for quite a bit of software and failed to land any significant sales on those investments. Today XBLG represents the only reason why XB is still in black and it's a large chunk of their revenue. So large that it's continually the only thing that they report on, and for good reason, it's one of (if not) the most successful subscription service that MS has (barring support contracts for enterprise software).

That being said, there's a reason why Phil continues to talk about not buying into 3rd party exclusivity anymore and doing their best to focus on their own internal groups -- it's because the money has already been sunk. There's no righting that direction, they need to now develop their internal studios to deliver high quality IPs. Part of the issue that they face is that XB first party games tend to be MP focused, and all the hype is still heavily around cinematic games. I'm sure they're working on something there, but paying for 3rd party exclusivity is going to cost them too large and is currently not worth it. Minecraft/Mojang seems like their only success so far considering all the licensing deals ontop of the software as well.

What they need is to continue to develop the newly formed studios to start putting out solid games, and it would help to have some cheaper studios crank out some high quality titles.

MS was very successful in the xbox 360 era of funding huge ips. Gears , mass effect and so on. The deals they made were not huge costs. Gears reportedly cost them 10m to fund.

Taking a 100m or so and spreading it out to devs to take full advantage of scorpio is all they need to do. They don't need exclusive on xbox scorpio. They just needs plays best on xbox scorpio. If they get big deals with some companies that wont hurt. DLC for GTA 6 or DLC for Fallout 5 or the next elder scrolls will be big gets even if its just exclusive for 6 months or shared on pc and scorpio. Esp if its something that can't be done well or at all on the older consoles. I doubt MS would need to spend infinite money on this stuff either .

A series of smart deals for dlc or enhanced graphics or marketing deals will be very smart of them. But I agree they need to increase their own internal studios. But scorpio is coming out in a big year of titles for them sea of thieves , forza , scale bound , crackdown couple with patches for gears 4 , halo 5 , recore and so on will be major selling points for scorpio

And as I said in other replies the constant pushing of the community of scorpio having the best graphics will do a lot for them. Its what lit the fire under the ps4 which launched with a much weaker selection of first party IPs than scorpio will launch with

 

[Shifty Geezer]

don't assume.

Don't assume what?

They can strip destruction out of xbox one games or make them cloud enabled only like crackdown. Cloud is happening as crackdown shows

If the cloud works, there's no need for Zen in Scorpio to enable next-gen games. We also don't know if Cloud is happening. Is Crackdown going to be the first of a whole new generation of cloud-based games, or a one-off? You assume it's the shape of things to come...

What times have we seen that ?

Xbox. 3DO. PC Engine. Neo Geo. Atari Lynx. Game Gear. PSP. PS Vita. PS4 Pro versus PS4.

 

[Jubei]

Oh please , MS has paid for exclusive content in the past. Notice how when Sony got exclusive content and advertising for COD it droped like a rock and now the newest one is the weakest selling of the series ? Didn't mention that did you

LOL what? are you actually blaming Sony for COD sales dropping off?

But you bring up Destiny 2 and that's great for sony , perhaps it will only manage to be half as big of a cluster fuck as the first one was. Uncharted was never an average seller so I don't see what your getting at there. Uncharted 3 sold extremely well.

Clusterfuck or not, its the biggest third party IP this gen. As for Uncharted 3, it sold 3-4 million and the 4th game sold 8,7 million. So it went from Gears of Wars 3 level to Halo 3 level

MS also has a ton of strong first party titles. Yes they aren't selling as well on a 30m install base as a 80m install base but that's to be expected. But Forza , halo , gears and so on are still big properties and then you have others like scalebound , sea of thieves , crackdown and so on. It also doesn't stop MS from building more big games.

Except Halo 3 sold 8 million on the same install base as Xbox One currently, so it has nothing to do with Sony that Halo 5 sold less.

And for every uncharted that Sony makes they still shit out drive clubs and blood bornes. Its not like they only shit out gold as you try and make it seem.

I dont even like the Souls games but looking at Bloodborne metacritic, i fail to see how you reached the conclusion that its "shit" and i dont think anyone expected it to sell 10 million copies.

With the most powerful console MS doesn't need to spend billions to entice developers. MS just has to spend enough to entice developers to push the envolpe on scorpio. Gamers pushed the 1080p vs 900p for ps4/ xbox one. When scorpio comes out doing native 4k vs 1080p or checkerboard upscaling on the ps4 /pro they will again beat that war drum. Downscaling for 1080p only users from 4k will also have its own set of benfits .

Its been pointed out to you again and again that the most powerful console doesnt win every time

Then there is backwards compatibility . Xbox one games will look great at 4k but xbox 360 games will run fantastic on scorpio. Oh and don't forget a heaping of Play anywhere. Xbox one to pc to scorpio and back again to pc..

Backwards compatability is amazing, Microsoft deserves all the credit in the world for it. But Play Anywhere is not currently something that will sell Scorpio, it doesnt even do a good job selling games in MS own PC store. Its a long term project, not something that will entice users next year, im not sure you are aware but many people dislike the windows store, they want the game on Steam

But of course things can only be rosy for Sony. Lets not forget the lack luster welcome the ps4 pro got , the problems with performance in pro games. Lets not forget all the luke warm reception for new ips during the ps4 generation. Or the fact that they have split their user base and come this fall they will have gone from the most powerful console to the weaker console. And lets not forget their constant money problems as a whole company. lets also not forget that their comeption is one of the worlds largest software companies..... But hey its all roses for sony and only an endless field of shit for MS

Cheer up mate

 

[Jubei]

Now an MS employee commented on that same thread i linked a few pages back

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=227886971&postcount=771

Lets go back to overhyping this

 

[Cyan]

We've seen plenty of times that the more expensive console with better specs still fails. And that's on a new gen. SO we don't know what's going to happen, but I'm pretty confident Scorpio will be a limited seller like PS4 Pro simple because it's not a new gen and won't get the same sort of launch - not sales numbers nor dev interest - as a new console gen.

Why is it not a new gen to you? The new PS4 Pro is not a new gen for obvious reasons, in fact some people might not understand its usefulness because it's based on an already very very successful mid-cycle console, so if something works there is no need to change it.

But the Xbox One is a not so successful console, just like the WiiU, and will have a short life span. Things have improved a lot ever since the new Slim came out, but the Slim is living in X1's purgatory, or on X1's version of hell.

Scorpio to me is a new console cycle. 5 times more capable than the previous one, a console with a 4 years life span like the original Xbox and the WiiU....

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Why is it not a new gen to you?

A generation is basically defined when the devs target it exclusively and don't worry about supporting cut down versions of their games for older machines.
Doesn't matter how powerful Scorpio is - if it's just a 4K/60 fps version of XB1 playing XB1 games, it'll be the same generation. Next gen will start with PS5. It might end up incorporating Scorpio if Scorpio is powerful enough to take the next-gen games, but the next-gen won't start with Scorpio and all games save maybe some MS exclusives will target PS4 and XB1 as base and just allow PC like improvements for the higher end versions of the same consoles.

 

[AlNom]

Now an MS employee commented on that same thread i linked a few pages back

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=227886971&postcount=771

Lets go back to overhyping this

Scorpio is a Taurus.

So they pulled another 180 as Taurus occupies the spot directly opposite Scorpio on the Celestial Longitude.

 

[iroboto]

Scorpio is a Taurus.

So they pulled another 180 as Taurus occupies the spot directly opposite Scorpio on the Celestial Longitude.

I didn't even know this thread existed. LOL. This is new info to me too. Al these references require me to google !! LOL