Xbox Scorpio: Final specs revealed

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ThePanzini

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#151  Edited By ThePanzini

@humanity: I was making the analogy Scorpio will be like a niche title it'll sell in limited numbers but for the people who care they'll appreciate it. For alot of PS4/XB1 owners graphics do matter legacy titles don't sell nowhere near the same on console as they do on PC and games have a much shorter tail too, console gamers generally only care about the new and pretty, 4K is being pushed for this reason ready or not.

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flippyandnod

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I also am confused how people seem to forget that the PS4 was sparse on exclusives until recently. But I am even more confused about how you think the current lineup is sparse on exclusives. Sony got Nioh, Nier, Yakuza Zero, Persona 5, Horizon and more just since the start of this year. And sure, some of those are available on PC too, but so are Xbox exclusives. MS has said every first party title will also be on Windows 10. They then waffled a bit on Halo on this front but that's not going to matter for a while since there isn't a new Halo game coming for a while.

Xbox may not really have "no games", but if you have a PS4 and a PC there are very few exclusives to drive you to buy it. And there really aren't likely to be many either since publishers are not going to forsake the current most successful console as easily as the 2nd place one. And first party titles are cross platform ("play anywhere").

I really do believe games matter and Scorpio has some work to do here. But it will be the most powerful game console on the market when it comes out, no question.

I'm still trying to figure out how this "xbox has no games" narrative got started... when the other side was "sparse" for the first 3 years with exclusives(and still is to be truthful about the current lineup)... is it selective memory or a group of people being waken up from a cryo sleep...

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monkeyking1969

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As a technical showcase the Scorpio is impressive. Making silicon that is built to be optimize current engines is a great idea for getting teh most out of old silcon, and their cooling system seems neat. An impressive bit of engineering all around. What it can do with current game engines is impressive and deserves discussion.

But...price.

I think from what MS has shown, the price won't be too astronomical. However, the cost being even slightly high is an issue for selling it widely. The PS 4 Pro is sells for $399 and Xbxo One S sells for $249; so THOSE are the prices they need close-in on. If the updates to Scorpio's hardware adds $200 making a $600 machine, which is what MANY pundits are theorizing, they are screwed. (Don't talk about PS3 being $600 because that was selling against at a $500 XBox 360. The market was closer and the gap was thinner, and I might point out Sony got railed at that price. ) If the updates to Scorpio's hardware adds $150 or even $100 they are in trouble. If the updates to Scorpio's hardware add $50 they are 'in-the-fight'. If they can meet that PS 4 Pro price...great now they just need to convince millions of people to buy it or upgrade to it.

As crazy as it might seem in a industry that pushes specs to the forefront of the discussions; it is price where actual sales happen. Microsoft has to SELL this system. I don't be advertise or hype to make it desirable to want. I'll be very clearly, to avoid confusion, the units they ship to retailers have to end up crossing checkouts into people's hands if this system is too succeed. I'd even say at this point what they price is far more important that what games are coming. The games coming show the town ahead, the price tells you is the road is even paved or if anyone will drive down it.

We can all have some enjoyment discussing the spec and features, yet we should all keep in mind this thing well succeed or fail on the other factors.

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mrcraggle

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#154  Edited By mrcraggle

@monkeyking1969: It's odd that you say they're screwed or in trouble. This is Microsoft. They could lose half of their money tomorrow and still be in much better financial shape than Sony. If all they had was a games console then yea, sure, they'd be screwed but this is Microsoft showing that they can get back on top after losing out with the original Xbox One. Phil Spencer has already said that it's going to be a premium console. Considering the performance jump (43% over the PS4 Pro in compute units alone), I think $600 is about right unless Sony dramatically reduce the price of the Pro before the release which I could see them doing to give themselves a price advantage as they can no longer compete as the most powerful console. Even if it were the same power as the PS4, it'd still for more as it'll also include a 4K blu-ray player. Sony make TV and the Xbox is doing things that its own box can't do. While a lot of people will argue that streaming is the future and I'm not going to argue against that, discs still have their place and studios aren't just printing these discs for the sake of it.

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n00bs7ay3r

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I can't help that feel that MS are going to market this thing more like they do their Elite controller. I don't think they expect your average consumer to buy this thing, that is what the S is for. This will be marketed as a "pro" console for the serious gamer and will only account for a small portion of their install base.

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Shivoa

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#156  Edited By Shivoa

@monkeyking1969: Considering the performance jump (43% over the PS4 Pro in compute units alone), I think $600 is about right unless Sony dramatically reduce the price of the Pro before the release which I could see them doing to give themselves a price advantage as they can no longer compete as the most powerful console. Even if it were the same power as the PS4, it'd still for more as it'll also include a 4K blu-ray player.

I mean, 43% is big without context. Surely that's worth paying $600 over $400 (although the Pro could go cheaper officially to spoil the release - you can already pick it up cheaper and with bundled games, often for less than the sticker price)... except it's really not.

TFLOPSvs XB1vs PS4Price (SRP)
XB1 (S)1.3 (1.4)100%70%$300+ (depending on HDD)
PS41.84140%100%$300+ (depending on HDD)
PS4 Pro4.2320%230%$400+ (depending on HDD)
XB1 Scorpio6460%330%$600???

Now getting two and a bit PS4 GPUs glued together for $400 vs $300 for a single PS4 sounds like a good deal but sticking a 3rd PS4 GPU in there doesn't really make me see $600. Hell, I can only just see $500 (due to extra RAM and UDH optical drive).

Three and a bit XB1 GPUs for $400, ok. Just over four and a half for $600? That's a lot less of a deal from those curves.

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OurSin_360

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#157  Edited By OurSin_360

@artisanbreads: i would wait and see what scorpio can actually do. You could probably drop a 1060 in your machine and be a huge upgrade for you now honestly but 4k wont happen. If they can actually get 4k 60 or even 4k 30 with consistent frame rate and decent settings it may be worth getting over a graphics card, it will also be more expensive. You could probably get a 1080 for whatever scorpio will cost and even with your older cpu etc probably get better performance. No telling until its out i guess though

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mems1224

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I can't help that feel that MS are going to market this thing more like they do their Elite controller. I don't think they expect your average consumer to buy this thing, that is what the S is for. This will be marketed as a "pro" console for the serious gamer and will only account for a small portion of their install base.

I mean, thats what they've been saying since this thing was announced. They're still expecting the Xbox One S to be their main console.

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mrcraggle

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@shivoa: I was considering the $600 price point when you factor the increase in CPU performance, GPU performance, 4GB more RAM that has much higher bandwidth as well as the UHD blu-ray drive, vapour cooling chamber, the amount of customisation and if Panos Panay is involved, it'll look amazing. I'm looking beyond just the specs here. $500 would be a great price point if it can actually deliver on native 4K with additional graphical options to boot. People that think this'll be less than $500 are out of their minds. The PS4 is only at that price point for a reason and the PS4 is basically keeping Sony afloat right now because it's certainly not their TV or mobile businesses.

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Shivoa

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#160  Edited By Shivoa

@mrcraggle: We know absolutely nothing about the CPU side (we don't even know the architecture - if they continue to use small Jaguar derived cores it's totally different to if they go with the cores taken from a Ryzen) so there's nothing to say there as we simply don't know. The extra RAM is nice but not adding much to the cost, the bandwidth of said RAM is factored into the extra RAM price (as in they use more chips to make the bus wider to give more bandwidth and pay a tiny cost for the extra silicon for more memory controllers on the SoC but these are not extreme speeds requiring expensive tech like a bleeding edge HBM or even GDDR5X at 11-12Gbps as you find attached to high end GPUs). The optical drive obviously is a cost Sony was unwilling to pay but also isn't exhorbatent, as seen in the inclusion in the $300 XB1S, and only gets cheaper with time (as we finally see this release date approaching). As for the cooler, that's a heatpipe without the pipe shape. It's not a cheap heatpipe but this isn't some magic unheard of tech, this is not a million miles from mainstream and the cooler that every other device uses. 15 years ago it was somewhat exotic, but the high end stock GTX 500 cards in 2010 launched with vapor chamber coolers - something continued to this day and the current high end nVidia cards & just about everything right down to the pretty cheap end of HSFs is now built on phase-change heat transfer (the pipes, they are everywhere). It's an added value, if they spend suitably to make this more than pure marketing then it's slightly more efficient than a cheap heatpipe solution (while also giving different space constraints) but not more than a marginal inclusion. These are not things you have to spend 50% more to buy.

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Rasrimra

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#161  Edited By Rasrimra

Surely can't be more than $350. The Switch was expected to be only $250. That's a $100 more for a normal sized box console that is not portable just a bit more powerful than the other boxes.

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ThePanzini

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@rasrimra: The PS4 Pro RRP is $400 and the Scorpio is better tech $400 would be the min price.

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Nardak

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#163  Edited By Nardak

I think much will depend on the kinds of games that xbox can offer to its players. Frankly for me buying xbox one was the biggest mistake i made in recent years gaming wise since I have bought very few games for that console compared to ps4 and pc.

Halo has kinda lost its luster for me since i played Halo 5 which was a pretty disappointing game with its repeating boss encounters and a very abrupt cliffhanger. Not that interested in visiting gears of wars either since there has been so many of those games in the series that I just cant get excited about that particular series anymore. Xbox kinda needs new franchises that are unique to it or at least exclusive to the console. Otherwise i might just as well get those games either for ps4 or for pc.

For me Microsoft kinda dropped the ball hard with its latest console. I really dont think that a high priced upgrade will make a difference if Microsoft doesnt have a lineup of games ready to back up that price.

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Shivoa

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So this is where I pronounce some "serious analysts" quoted in the press are just saying random stuff with no justification, betting on unknowns so they can say they're right and none of it seems backed by anything remotely close to an understanding of Elec Eng or component costs.

"I estimate the basic hardware will cost around $650" - directly from someone's ass at IDC because we simply don't know enough to be sure right now but please tell me where the costs are to even guess that:

  • A slight mobo redesign (more tracks for more memory chips);
  • some GDDR5 chips (and not even the fast ones, nVidia buy 8-9Gbps GDDR5 and 11-12Gbps GDDR5X chips, this uses 6.8Gbps so almost certainly 7Gbps chips [which are relatively value segment] and no issues designing the memory controller on the SoC to drive them - it just uses quite a lot of them to aggregate a decent bandwidth and offer 12GB of RAM for volume);
  • bigger SoC (but not as much of a change as you might expect from the look if it, dropping the eSRAM saves space and this is only looking to be ~10% bigger than the PS4 Pro, they just clock it faster [not free but also more a design cost than per-unit cost] - at least for the parts we know about for sure like the GPU side and why would they hold back if the CPU side was more than a clock-boost and small refinement?);
  • small cooler upgrade (vapour chambers are old hat at this point, it's a heatpipe like you see in even value HSFs except not a pipe shape - they all work by evaporation nowadays so this is not a huge expense or outlandish to include on a model that clocks high for a console);
  • literally everything else is in the XB1S for $250-300 street price, including the UHD drive and some of those parts (old SoC, old RAM) are coming out so it's only price delta, not total cost of the new parts.

I'm shocked by where people think this console comes from, with what we currently know, because surely they've noticed the SRP of a PS4 Pro is $400. They overclocked one of those and did a few upgrades to it. $500. If not then they're looking for short-term profits. Even that is pushing it and I'd expect Sony to officially drop the Pro to $350 soon (they already did official offers with a Pro and two games for $350 so that has to be the permanent price soon) so I really can't see a Scorpio for more than $450 being reasonable. I look forward to finding out if I'm right or if MS execs are as crazy as these analysts.