Not a dollar over $450USD

I don't know about price, but that console will probably live or die by the games you can play on it and so far there aren't any killer XB1 exclusives that feel like they would need the extra horsepower. Multiplatform games will surely benefit in the long run but if you didn't find the XB1 roster appealing before, I doubt you'll want to spend even more money and hope it gets better, albeit now with better AA and load times.

All that said, if they could squeeze it in at $400 it would probably sell well. Even $450 seems like a stretch unless they have some really strong Scorpio-only launch titles that make them stand above the competition.

My original plan was to simply get the Scorpio and jump ship to MS for all multiplatform titles, while getting the occasional PS4 exclusive on my non-Pro system. As time has went on I don't even know anymore. I've dumped a ton of money into a PC and I think thats probably where I'll head for stuff that comes out there and isn't a dumpster fire.

Assuming the $400 price point will be a thing, I'm even game to trade my One S if there's full backwards parity. I don't find Microsoft or Sony's hardware as intrinsically valuable as older consoles, which I keep in a pile under my bed like a dragon-man.

I'd be surprised if they set it above $400US, but Xbox is in such a weird place I'm not sure the price of the hardware is all that relevant. What are they doing with first party games? What are they doing with exclusives? Are they going to double down on Play Anywhere, and how is that going to impact console sales?

Couldn't agree more. They have to have a game or two up their sleeves to show off this new hardware, otherwise I don't really get the point.

Depends on what it actually is.

If Scorpio is basically a fancier PS4 Pro that does 4k better (meaning no new exclusives) that becomes the best place to play multiplats, I think $400 is the ceiling.

If Scorpio is roughly on par with the PS4 Pro, probably $350.

Xbox just doesn't have the library atm to go head to head with Sony on price unless it's a clear step up in performance.

$400's probably the sweet point for the basic system, but $500 with a couple of games or controllers would probably be a seller.

If they can get it to 400 and compete with the inferior(?)ps4 pro, then they could make a dent. 450 would be the maximum though.

If they've got a bunch of extra copies of Halo 5 lying around, they could probably get away with $450; but I think $400 is probably the ceiling here. Unless the Scorpio is way more powerful than expected and isn't just a step up but is a legit new console generation. It'd still need games though, and Crackdown 3 isn't enough.

$499 this is premium stuff yo. Still costs less than GeForce 1070 :D

I fully believe it'll be $500. If it's less than $450 I'll be shocked. From day one Spencer and Co. have been saying that this is a premium console for high end gamers. Scorpio will be for people that know what a teraflop is, and have the means to buy a 4K HDR tv. It'll be for people willing to spend another $300+ on a VR headset.

The PS4 Pro is $400. The Scropio will have a more powerful GPU (from AMD's upcoming Vega chipset). That will warrant, in theory, a $100 price difference (we'll see if it does in practice).

If Scropio comes in at $400 Microsoft will likely be selling it at a substantial loss.

The Xbox One S can already take advantage of HDR stuff and 4K blu-rays. That might see a $50 price cut with the release of Scorpio. If you don't want to game in 4K or VR, then they'll sell you the One S.

I'd hope for somewhere around 400, but I'm thinking this thing will be priced closer to 500 simply judging by the type of technology they claim to be putting in this thing. I'm kind of wondering what they're going to go with in terms of naming the thing, I mean pro is already taken. Maybe they'll just throw the word elite on the end and call it a day? Who knows.

Scorpio like the Pro only appeals to the core even if its widely successful its not going to moving the needle at all, I doubt the XB1 being ahead of 360 still rings true anymore MS PR has been mute for months.

Depends what is successful? PS4 has been outselling the XB1 often at a higher price point for a long while can't see Scorpio reversing this trend, however MS has show with aggressive pricing it is very competitive at least in the US/UK its strongest markets.

Ultimately I think Scorpio is going to be more of a PR exorcise preparing for next gen, 3-4 years with MS having multi-platforms looking and run better on its machine generating alot of postivity about the Xbox brand and help shifting the negative perception over kinect, drm and the 180's. I think Scorpio will be $400 MS will try to make a profit it should be $50 cheaper than the Pro in the US/UK because it would a big coup if MS can beat the Pro, Spencer can show the brass upstairs that they can match Sony and it would need to be cheaper to do so.

they really should cheap out on the storage (letting people add their own) and put it all in the GPU- i'm going to wager $401, bob.

"...actual retail price??"

Games

it needs to be $400 but i would be shocked if it launched at that price. i personally wont get it if its over $500

I'd wager $500. It's more powerful than the PS4 Pro and is packing a 4K blu-ray player on top of that. The Pro cut some corners to reach its price, I doubt MS will do the same. I'm betting that they're targeting the people that want a powerful PC but don't have the know-how to build their own or just want the best of the best in front of their TV. But if they want to succeed, they need the games to back it up. The PS4 has had a handful of really amazing games for the past couple of years but this year alone, they've been killing it while MS have a super niche title in Halo Wars 2, Sea of Thieves looks pretty cool but not a system seller and maybe Crackdown 3 this year. At E3, they need to announce games and they need to be coming this year. Microsoft completely dominated the previous generation but Sony are crushing it with sales of the PS4 probably close to 60 million at this point and I'd guess that the Xbox is half of that. The thing is, MS need Scorpio to succeed. Time and time again, games that are multiplatform are just performing much worse on the XB1 than they are on the standard PS4.

$500. It's billed as a premium product. They already have the Xbone S for the cheaper end of things.

Think of it as the Xbox Elite Controller of consoles.

If the console can play games as well as a pc featuring an i5, 16gig of ram, and a 1070 then I will pay $400 for it. Mostly I am done with consoles, so the only thing that can get me to pick it up is if its cheap enough and powerful enough that I will pick it up at random. Right now, the Xbone isn't powerful enough to make me want one at $200, so the scorpio had better bring something good.

It's going to be $400-500 and that'll be fine.

Anything worth playing is going to be on PC thanks to Play Anywhere, so even if Microsoft priced it at $100 I wouldn't buy it.

Although the reality is, Microsoft don't have anything exclusive I give a damn about. Alan Wake 2 would make me care, but I think that would be on PC for sure too.

This, So far in 2017, the Xbox seems like a barren wasteland compared to just about every platform. Well, maybe that's a little too harsh, but in terms of exclusives specifically, I think it's a fair thing to say. And without more exclusives, I don't see the Scorpio picking up much of any steam whatsoever. I really hope Sea of Thieves and Crackdown 3 launch alongside it and that they have a few more surprises at E3.

There are fewer, but there are a good number of exclusives I've enjoyed. I like my Xbox One, and it's really only for exclusives as I've got a real nice PC for most of my gaming. Granted now the PC takes over for much of that but I still use the Xbox for backward compatible titles or games my roommate has on Xbox that aren't multiplatform.

$50 more than whatever everyone is guessing.

@ripelivejam: $1 less than what everyone is guessing ;)

Probably $400, since the regular Xbox is already $250, you don't wanna draw the "well is it REALLY twice as good" comparisons. I certainly wouldn't consider it at $500, but it could still be a success. At $400, minus a trade in of XB1, would be fair.

It completely depends on the power of the system.

4k isn't going to be a thing for the mass market until you can get a TV from a brand you've heard of for under 1k and there's a good flow of content for it. I honestly don't think it'll move the needle in either direction. Just like the ps4 pro, which also did very little for Sony. It's a nice option to have that most people don't care about (yet).

Has to be *at least* $400, if not $450. Naturally over here there'll also be a $100 "bonus" added to the price.

Some interesting exclusives too, maybe? Possibly?

Scorpio-only titles would harpoon this thing right from launch.

There would totally a market for a $600 console if it wasn't for the stigma of the PS3 launch. People are out there buying >$700 phones and graphics cards, so why not consoles as well?

The actual price will probably be between 400-500 dollars. Hopefully they'll stuff as much technology as possible in the thing and go towards a pricing of $499. A cheaper and less powerful model would draw too many straight comparisons to the PS4 Pro and Microsoft really need to do something beyond that to differentiate in the market. There will probably also be some sort of bundle with an included VR headset and motion controllers for around $799.

I fully expect them to drop the price of the Xbox One S to $199 at the same time, so admittedly this would leave a huge gap in their portfolio in the 200-400 dollar range. Perhaps Microsoft could fill that gap with various bundles.

What I'm most interested in is how they're aiming to sell the "Scorpio" to people with relatively powerful gaming computers and console players without 4K screens. Maybe the ability to use a wide array of VR solutions will be their "killer app".

@rongalaxy: You can already find 4K sets from companies like LG, Sony and Samsung for around $500. Not necessarily ones with great deep colours or the kind of response time you'd want for gaming, but 4K sets none the less. And the content issue is about on the same level as during the Xbox 360 and PS3 launch. UHD movies are in stores, streaming services like Netflix offer 4K content and several TV distributors are starting 4K channels this year.

People assuming you get more horsepower for cheap - be ready for a disappointment:

"Spencer did not give anything away, but said again that people can expect a "premium" price.

...

It's supposed to be for the "person who buys the majority of the games, the person who's playing the most games, spending the most hours, spending the most dollars. It's like our Elite controller."

Now people might ask how should this then be the device that helps them to catch up to Sony - the answer seems to be - that's simply not want it supposed to do - instead it's an alternative option for a small subset of gamers.

"Spencer added that he fully expects that Xbox One S, with its lower relative price point, will sell far better than Project Scorpio. "The majority of the consoles that we're going to sell are the Xbox One S"

Source

@ir0n: well it depends on the performance, if it can get close to 4k at 60 then its worth a premium. If its still 4k 30 it should be around whatever the pro is at. If they go too high they are entering the wrong market which is the guys who spend 600+ on graphics card upgrades with which this wont compete.

Well if you think you will get a machine that is capable to run native 4k (which MS claims Scorpio will be able to) at 500 bucks - think again.

@isomeri: I think people might have been a lot more willing to spend that premium money in the past, before these companies broke the console cycle. Now it seems a lot more risky to invest large chunks of money into a console model that might get leapfrogged again in the same generation. It's not the same type of long term investment as a videocard and honestly at some point you're just better off investing in a pc instead. The entire idea of these pro and premium gamer consoles is really misguided as it's fracturing not only your consumer base but putting a bigger workload on developers as well who now have to push out multiple sku's for the same console. Games were buggy and I optimized as it were, and now you need to make a version that runs well on PS4 basic as well as a version that runs with the bells and whistles on a Pro.. but doesn't offer anything the basic can't give you.. it's a headache and sucks for consumers that in the past only had to make one big hardware investment.

Yeah, the idea that the PS4 Pro is a 4k machine is a joke, the only stuff that runs at 4k are some indies, last gen ports or games that don't look anything special to begin with. It's all marketing BS to try and fool people into thinking it's delivering 4k when really it's minor upgrades, the PS4 Pro should have been used to make 60 FPS a commonality, not slightly higher resolutions.

By the time the Scorpio comes out, a GTX 1080 will probably still be more expensive and that can barely do 4k 30 on everything.

This. The Play Anywhere idea is DOA since Sony and Nintendo are both clamping down on exclusives. MS are just shooting themselves in the foot, just like they did with used games DRM. Sony said "nope you can play your used games on PS4" and wiped the floor with MS.

Dropping the exclusives idea only works if other manufacturers do it too. And they aren't.

And nobody's gonna buy games off the MS Store after seeing what happened to Games for Windows Live. They'll wait for a Steam release (like Quantom Break).

Price is irrelevant. What's far more important is what this thing actually does...

@humanity: I'm not trying to argue that the Scorpio will necessarily be a "sensible" purchase for anyone. Like you said, it's increasingly cost-effective and smart to invest in good PC parts if you want to remain on the cutting edge of video game graphics.

But I do think that people are misjudging the amount of people out there with too much disposable income who are willing and prepared to purchase these kinds of iterative and expensive upgrades annually. There are a surprising amount of people out there who are planning on upgrading their 1080 to a 1080 Ti as we speak. Many people buy a new smartphone or tablet every year, even though the upgrades are barely noticeable.

Like @thepanzini said, the Scorpio will mainly be a PR campaign for Microsoft. They will get to say that they have the most powerful console on the market and attach terms like "premium", "high-end" and "exclusive" to their Xbox brand. When, in a few years, they come out with the next console aimed for the mainstream consumer, they can use that social capital to their advantage. As such, it wouldn't really hurt Microsoft if they priced the Scorpio closer to a thousand dollars, or at least have a SKU with some sort of tacky chrome trimming and a 4 terabyte drive at around that price.

Unless this thing is competitively priced (like $500 max) I don't see what their audience is. If they want to market it to the people willing to drop big bucks on "the graphics", at some point they're talking to the same crowd who'd throw money at a high-end PC... which already has access to all the Xbox exclusives. If they offer any kind of official upgrade thing for people who own a regular Xbox, maybe they'll get an edge over the Pro?

Then again, seemed like everyone threw their underwear over their heads and cried when the Pro didn't have a 4k blu-ray player in it, so maybe that will be Microsoft's triumph.

@isomeri: I absolutely agree. There are some people on these very boards who run SLI setups with the latest hardware. I was simply saying the earth is slightly salted for some after these mid generation upgrades emerged, and MS might not sell as many units as they would have had this happened later in the console cycle.

It will definitely be great PR for them if everything works as advertised, unless the price will be so prohibitive as to overshadow any of those technical improvements. Then again, people ARE buying that XB1 Elite controller quite a lot which I guess was a good test case of how willing people are to pay a high price for premium gaming products.

@isomeri said:

The people willing to pay that much money for a machine for gaming are probably just going to build a PC. Xbox Live is OK, but Steam puts it to shame.

@mcfart: Play Anywhere isn't going anywhere though. Microsoft's 2016 reorganization made it clear that all the company's products need to be part of the Windows 10 ecosystem, including everything from the Xbox division. Which means that they can't cordon themselves off and have lots of exclusives that don't show up on the PC. The way things are now, I think Microsoft doesn't care if you have an Xbox One and a PS4/Switch or a PC and a PS4/Switch; so long as you are buying something produced by Microsoft.

This does remove a lot of the current incentive to buy an Xbox, so they need to have a new incentive. "The Scorpio is like a PC, just more user-friendly" may be that incentive; in which case the Scorpio may very well be a premium product with a high price point.

And I wouldn't be surprised if at E3, Microsoft reveals a bunch of new Xbox- and PC-only games alongside the Scorpio; because right now the problem isn't that most of the best Xbox games are also on PC. The problem is that those games are also on the PS4, and the PS4 has a bunch of games that aren't available elsewhere.

I think the entire point of Scorpio is to attack Steam directly and Sony indirectly. They want to make money off games, not hardware. Scorpio will enable non-PC users to buy their games and that's that. I bet you will not see any Xbox exclusives, rather Windows Store and Xbox exclusives.

It makes a lot of sense because it is perfect for consumers. You get to play where you want, while they will make lots more money than if just Xbox was successful.

I just don't see this making any kind of serious impact on the sales of either console. It's already too late.

@sinusoidal said:

There must be plenty of people out there with the income and desire to get "the best gaming experience" but without the know-how to build a PC. Or perhaps people simply don't want to have a PC plugged into their TV. They certainly don't know what a Steam is, unless they've grown up with PC gaming during the last decade.

We're kind of in a bubble in these forums. The vast majority of my friends don't have a gaming PC and especially not one plugged into their TV. They play games on a console and some of them bought a PS4 Pro because they heard that it makes their games look better. A lot of people play games these days. Consoles are often a central hub of the living room, used for much more than just gaming.

The people out there buying >2000 dollar OLED TV's are probably dying to get more content on their screens, and the Scorpio should meet that need pretty nicely.

@fezrock: I would say MS do care very much where you buy their games from they would much rather you bought an XB1 lock you into their ecosystem earning a licence fee of every game you buy which is by far the biggest earner for any platform regardless PS4, Steam, GOG, or XBox. The fact is their market share has cratered Xbox has been cost cutting everywhere 'Play Anywhere' is simply another revenue stream accepting the fact most people don't or won't own their hardware. MS has booked half the E3 floor space compared to last year with Spencer saying Crackdown 3 is their big game this year I wouldn't expect to many new announcements.

@zevvion I don't see how Scorpio is attacking steam if they want people to use the Windows Store then they need a killer app Steam had HL2 and Origin has Battlefield MS only has Halo left both Gear & Forza have shown their not and they've tried Halo before with GFWL.

I swear I posted this yesterday but can't find it now. The system needs to be $400 USD and it needs to play all 1st party games in 4k. As someone who owns a PS4 Pro and a gaming PC at home there is very little to entice me into upgrading from my current Xbox One.

$400 is where the console should be priced to stay competitive but my gut is saying it'll be a $500 box.

@thepanzini: If you believe no one will buy Halo off the Windows Store if that's the only way to play on PC (not to mention the other Windows exclusives they will likely announce soon), then I won't attempt convincing you.