Mixed Information on Consoles or How I learned to loathe PR *spin off*

They announced a console without any specs other than the 6TF, and no games. But it's a special case, there is no precedent for a mid gen console, and it's supposed to be FC and BC, so it feeds the assumption all current games will look better. They had to do it now in case Sony announce theirs (which they did, in financial times). Neither company said anything other than confirming some rumors without much details.

 

My bad, i was confusing the original "60fps alone is ok" with the now 60fps +120 repro at least rule now applicable.

 

From Eurogamer interview with Phil Spencer:

So, the power of Scorchio is ONLY used to increase resolution in games. No improved effects, framerate would basically be same, only native resolution would be 4K???
This, and better compatibility with Oculus Rift?

I was hoping it would be more like upgrading from lower spec PC to a better specced PC :/

 

Think it's poor messaging surely? The least you'd expect is 1080p60

 

If thats the case and Project Scorpio is really intended only for 4K, does that mean it won't work at 1080p, will there be better GFX quality at 1080p?

 

It would be insane if that was the case.

 

I can actually understand that, if the main story is that all Xbox One games will work no matter if you have Xbox One, Xbox One S or Scorpio.
You're already handling 2 or 3 performance targets there, XB1 and XB1S can probably be handled together, but still that's 2 completely different targets, and if you then add 1080p with extra effects that's one more target, and those extra effects would only be used on Scorpio when running in 1080p.
I can easily see why they wouldn't want to do that.

Of course, if the game is available for PC too, it changes things, and Scorpio should be able to scale details accordingly

 

It'd literally be XB1-4K, of value only for 4K owners wanting 4K XB gaming. That's a very limiting market. 6 TF improved games would see non-4K owners wanting to upgrade/buy in.

If so (and that's what Phil is saying!), this and the other thread need a bit of a title change.

 

It looks like he's downplaying the Scorpio... They must have realized that announcing a much better product than what you have on shelves one year and a half in advance is not good for sales!
If the purpose of Microsoft E3 conference was to go kamikaze against the PS4, they did accomplish something, but then all the money spent on the Xbox One S looks a bit wasted in retrospect...

 

If so, didn't they learn anything from xbox one PR fiasko.

 

Wouldn't a Scorpio on a 1080p TV still look better than an X1 as many X1 games run sub-1080p? You should be effectively getting downsampled 4K on a 1080p display.

But, MS seriously has some of the worst PR and messaging. It's so inconsistent and confusing.

 

Just thinking
Buy Xcorpio in 2017 and enjoy 2013 graphic upscaled to 4k
Buy the Xagitter in 2021, enjoy 2021 graphic. Have you an Xcorpio? Nerd don't cry: put the game in and play it downscaled with less effects in forward compatibility mode
btw my favorite model is phoeniX

 

Sony's PS4E PR message was also confusing..

 

it's probably about making it simple to market right now, they can 'update' the message closer to release.

show it now to show that their back in the game, but say most people wont need it right now, so just buy a slim.

it really is pretty far away, but if you can wait and not play the games then wait and don't buy ps4 or neo either. (is what their going for)

 

I can crank out 4K60 on my iMac with GF780M but at waaay lower detail levels. Scorpio is a console and devs will be chosing what to compromise. As I posted above, I have a 50" 4K TV (a decent one) and I can't discern a difference bewteen 4K/UHD and 1440p at 8ft distance. If I'd known this before configuring my system I may have chosen a 1070 card cinstead of a 1080 but c'est la vie. And frankly, the differences between most High, Very High and Ultra settings on PC games are so subtle as to be virtually pointless as well. It's mostly a e-penis bragging rights.

6Tf sounds like a nice blob of performance to output detailed textures at a good resolution (1440p minimum), with - relative to PC settings - High/Very High lighting and shadows and draw distance at 60Hz - assuming the CPU can do that and I'm assuming it can.

This is what I would expect Microsoft/AMD to offer when connected to a 1080p TV, Nvidia call it Dynamic Super Resolution. In typical PC fashion it's got a bunch of different settings for people to twiddle about with but even a basic fixed avergae downsample would produce good results.

 

It actually sounds like it's going to do what many people speculated the PS4 neo was gonna do when it first leaked. And that is simply run Xbox One games at a higer res.

Though with the extra power over the neo Microsoft may come closer to the 4K target than Sony.

 

I also feel that these new consoles will support 4k in name, but mostly in media functions, and the extra power will just allow a stable 1080p60 and better VR. Perhaps some games that run at 1080p60 now can run at higher resolutions and/or good VR framerates. Otherwise, I am curious that neither design seems to overcome CPU bottlenecks much when this was suggested to be the biggest bottleneck for the current generation by so many, but at least memory bandwidth is a nice step up in the Scorpio. Late 2017 though - that's quite late. But all in all otherwise it's a good step up from what the Xbox One is now. The Neo convinces me less, but I also don't believe it will be out this year. It sounded like that was their plan after they learned that Microsoft was working on this model, but they weren't sure when Scorpio would launch. Now the only reason for Neo to launch this year would be if it allowed you to play Resident Evil VII in VR mode without compromises.

 

Yeah, I dont think it will last. Same applies to Neo...it will be a slippery slope type of thing.

It will be four years since XBO by the time it's on shelves. That's the same length of time Xbox had before 360. Granted, that was a cut short gen, but before then, generations typically lasted only 5 years. In other words, you could already consider it a normal, albeit short, generation.

Spencer's messaging here though is stupid, because he'll have to walk it back at some point, and look disingenuous. But, these large corps dont tend to care about such things typically, they walk back stuff all the time,

 

Well we know (I think!) Sony are simply upscalling - and at that resolution you have to ask if you can really truely spot the difference between upscalling and native because this gen many say they don't see it and (in theory) the difference is bigger (arcminutes effect or whatever it is - what the human eye can percieve).