Phil Spencer: We could have released Xbox codename Scorpio, but we want to make it better.

[hph6203]

Sony has an upgraded console coming out.

 

It was probably going to be announced at E3.

 

It was rumored to be released at the end of this year (to coincide with PSVR).

 

It was rumored to be 2/3 as powerful as the Xbox Scorpio. 

 

Phil Spencer claims that releasing an updated console this year would be a mistake, because it wouldn't be powerful enough to provide true 4K/high detail VR.

 

Sony now has to either deal with those comments if they do launch the console as rumored ("why are you lying to us Sony, look what Xbox had in store for us and you bring us this shit?), or they have to delay their new console launch to the same timeframe as the Xbox Scorpio, thus killing their first mover advantage.

 

Microsoft knew Sony had them beat to the premium console market they were trying to create, so they announced specs before they have a box to show. It's why Andrew House (CEO of Playstation effectively) said he was "surprised" by the early announcement. "Surprised" in this case is code for "those son of a bitches out maneuvered us for once".

[Sakkura]

6 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

1440p/1600p was never a broadcast standard, and thus, there was no point in TV manufacturers ever making a 1440p HDTV. There would be literally zero native content for it. All broadcast and movie standards bodies decided that 4K was the next big step for TV's. Especially since for Movie and TV broadcasting, the difference between 1440p and 1080p is pretty small. Hell, in many cases, 1080p is still sufficient for movies and TV, and even 4K makes little difference. So trying to sell someone on "1440p" (Just imagine how they'd try and market that? Hey Guys! 2.5K! Or they could use the dumbass and factually incorrect marketing method that phones use, and call 1440p "2K").

Marketing-wise, you're right... though in practice, of course, 4K is less worth it for TVs than 1440p would be. Diminishing returns.

 

As for calling 1440p "2K", it's really no worse than calling 2160p 4K. If anything, "2K" kinda undersells the horizontal resolution of 2560x1440, where 4K slightly oversells 3840x2160.

[nims0c]

Can't wait for that 4K 30 fps cinematic experience.

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, Sakkura said:

Marketing-wise, you're right... though in practice, of course, 4K is less worth it for TVs than 1440p would be. Diminishing returns.

 

As for calling 1440p "2K", it's really no worse than calling 2160p 4K. If anything, "2K" kinda undersells the horizontal resolution of 2560x1440, where 4K slightly oversells 3840x2160.

On a technical level, you're right about 2K vs 4K both being "not exactly correct", but 2160p is near enough to 4K that I think it's nitpicking to say it's off. It does oversell the resolution, but only a bit. Whereas 1440p is 2.5K. Using this system, 1080p would be "2K".

 

I disagree that 1440p would be more worth it for TV's. Why? If I'm going to up the resolution, I might as well just jump to 4K. 1440p doesn't offer enough of a resolution increase to be especially noticeable for the majority of content consumed on a TV (Movies and TV). But you can look at it in different ways of course. The difference between 1440p and 2160p isn't much, true, but neither is the difference between 1080p and 1440p.

[Trik'Stari]

Now if only they could embrace their alleged "unified operating system" and STOP MAKING GAMES EXCLUSIVE TO THE SHITBOX

 

>.< GIVE ME MY HALO GODDAMNIT.

[suicidalfranco]

32 minutes ago, stconquest said:

I think people would.  I don't know what percentage of the market they would not though.  Maybe bundle free online play.... forever.

come on, they complained 9 years ago when the PS3 started at 600$ and that was one of the most advanced piece of tech at the time. I payed mine 1000$ cause i bought it in Angola at the time. But many simply didn't want to pay that much and just picked the 360 because of the price.

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Now if only they could embrace their alleged "unified operating system" and STOP MAKING GAMES EXCLUSIVE TO THE SHITBOX

 

>.< GIVE ME MY HALO GODDAMNIT.

Well according to E3, that's changing. I don't know if they've specifically mentioned Halo yet (Aside from Wars 2), but I'm fairly sure all of the E3 game announcements are XBO + PC, and if you buy it from the XBOX Store (digitally) or the Windows Store, you get a copy for both.

[atrash]

5 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

Now if only they could embrace their alleged "unified operating system" and STOP MAKING GAMES EXCLUSIVE TO THE SHITBOX

 

>.< GIVE ME MY HALO GODDAMNIT.

there's hope..

 

http://www.techspot.com/news/65233-xbox-play-anywhere-program-halo-6-coming-pc.html#comments

[stconquest]

1 minute ago, suicidalfranco said:

come on, they complained 9 years ago when the PS3 started at 600$ and that was one of the most advanced piece of tech at the time. I payed mine 1000$ cause i bought it in Angola at the time. But many simply didn't want to pay that much and just picked the 360 because of the price.

In this case, it would be worth it.  GTX1070, i5, 16GB 2133 RAM, SSD

[suicidalfranco]

2 minutes ago, stconquest said:

In this case, it would be worth it.  GTX1070, i5, 16GB 2133 RAM, SSD

It was worth it also back then, specially when you had this kind of news surrounding the PS3s power

http://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html

Quote

The Condor Cluster project began four years ago, when PlayStation consoles cost about $400 each. At the same time, comparable technology would have cost about $10,000 per unit. Overall, the PS3s for the supercomputer’s core cost about $2 million. According to AFRL Director of High Power Computing Mark Barnell, that cost is about 5-10% of the cost of an equivalent system built with off-the-shelf computer parts.

Another advantage of the PS3-based supercomputer is its energy efficiency: it consumes just 10% of the power of comparable supercomputers.

 

[stconquest]

3 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

It was worth it also back then, specially when you had this kind of news surrounding the PS3s power

http://phys.org/news/2010-12-air-playstation-3s-supercomputer.html

 

You complain about paying for one, yet are trying to tell me a series of 1700+ PS3s is appealing... The last console I owned was the SNES. 

[suicidalfranco]

2 minutes ago, stconquest said:

You complain about paying for one, yet are trying to tell me a series of 1700+ PS3s are appealing... The last console I owned was the SNES. 

i'm not complaining, i enjoyed mine and was happy with it, plus if you prefer the single unit comparison: "when PlayStation consoles cost about $400 each. At the same time, comparable technology would have cost about $10,000 per unit"

One PS3 = a 10000$ piece of tech in performance.

Also there was this bit in 2007 at his launch:

Quote

Even a single PS3 can be used to significantly accelerate some computations. Marc Stevens, Arjen K. Lenstra, and Benne de Weger have demonstrated using a single PS3 to perform an MD5 bruteforce in a few hours. They say: "Essentially, a single PlayStation 3 performs like a cluster of 30 PCs at the price of only one" (in November 2007

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_3_cluster#Single_PS3 

[dalekphalm]

22 minutes ago, nims0c said:

Can't wait for that 4K 30 fps cinematic experience.

To be fair, the UHD 4K BluRay spec allows for HFR movies (up to 60 FPS). Unless you're talking about gaming - in which case, it's entirely up to the Devs to target a graphics level they're happy with.

[alamox]

12 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

To quote our dear friend Phil Spencer, the head of the Xbox division,

 

 

You heard it hear first folks, the more powerful Xbox One has been delayed...

 

This is kinda funny, Microsoft delaying things for once. Let's just hope this pays off and translate to a good product.

 

http://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-considered-launching-upgraded-xbox-one-year

 

complete and utter BS, microsoft got caught by surprise when they heard Devs getting guide lines from sony about PS4k, so they rushed to talk about how willing they are to make xbox upgradable, couple weeks following the announcement theleaks about the sony guide lines started showing up, Devs were already working on content for sony since the beginning of the year.

one of the reasons they talked about it on E3 a year and a half before the release date, is because they are late, and because they have no content, so they pushed specs and talked about it, hoping sony would bring it up to spark an argument about how fast scorpio is compared to ps4k, but sony didnt take the bait, and i am quite positive sony could launch it with PSVR , they probably have enough content and stock.

so yea microsoft didnt launch scorpio because they had no content, and they are a year behind, so they buffed up the specs and say we want to make it even better.

[Uzukami]

Honestly for me 1080p looks terrible now...

 

You can't say that 1080p 60fps is so close to 4K that it's not worth it....

 

I can understand people who have gotten used to 120Hz+ refresh rates not liking the idea of 4K 60fps but those saying that 1080p 60fps is enough need to actually see it before writing it off.

[Trik'Stari]

1 hour ago, atrash said:

there's hope..

 

http://www.techspot.com/news/65233-xbox-play-anywhere-program-halo-6-coming-pc.html#comments

 

1 hour ago, dalekphalm said:

Well according to E3, that's changing. I don't know if they've specifically mentioned Halo yet (Aside from Wars 2), but I'm fairly sure all of the E3 game announcements are XBO + PC, and if you buy it from the XBOX Store (digitally) or the Windows Store, you get a copy for both.

I won't hold my breath. Even if they did it, when would we get the older games that I didn't get to play?

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

 

I won't hold my breath. Even if they did it, when would we get the older games that I didn't get to play?

That I cannot say. I for one hope they release the Master Chief Collection on PC, as well as Halo 5 and whatever upcoming Halo games there are.

[suicidalfranco]

2 minutes ago, Trik'Stari said:

 

I won't hold my breath. Even if they did it, when would we get the older games that I didn't get to play?

also obligatory W10 and MS App store exclusive, cause fuck the OS you like and your store of choice (gog for me cause drm-free is amazing) 

[atrash]

1 minute ago, Trik'Stari said:

 

I won't hold my breath. Even if they did it, when would we get the older games that I didn't get to play?

Now that I wouldn't hold my breath for..They could but it'll probably be just a side project or something.  

[rattacko123]

13 hours ago, Thony said:

I wonder what are the facts behind "you can't do a true 4K console this year" 

AMD hasn't released Zen yet

[Doobeedoo]

Well AMD will probably make an great APU based on 14nm parts for it. 
Though I see that it's a joke as far as 4K gaming really. Playback yes. Gaming, just no. Upscaling shit or simply reducing quality. 4K makes no sense with reduced visual quality. 1080p will always look better with maxed settings than 4K with lowered. To actually benefit 4K it needs to keep same maxed setting and high enough framerate. No way for console anyway.
 

[PlayStation 2]

And this is why you don't sit on your arses when making your next consoles, otherwise shit like the PS4 Neo and the Project Scorpio happen.

[Linusinium]

14 hours ago, Misanthrope said:

Yep it's the price: they could sell a tiny console with a soldered 1080 on it and be mostly ok at 4k 30fps but I don't think they could sell that for any less than 800 to 1k usd. 

I wonder how much the 4K fee will be, the xbox live subscription must be going up too.

 

 

Internal numbers are unlikely to ever leak out but I wonder how much a unit will actually cost them to build. For the past few years, the notion that Sony and MS are selling consoles at a loss (lol) or minimal profit has been firmly entrenched in the media but it couldn't be further from the truth.

 

It's like the ifixit tear-downs. They disassemble a device, for an example an iphone, price out the parts and the total is counted as the cost. However, the prices used are the ones us individual consumers would pay. So if I as consumer order the iphone's speaker from a catalog, that's the price used. That does not account for discounts that Microsoft can leverage when ordering a 100 million console parts.

 

I used to work in a parts warehouse a long time ago. We pay $57 for a part, turn around and sell it for $92 to a small store chain. You as a consumer? Guessing $150? Wrong. $197.

 

Misanthrope's estimate above sounds right but if they were to sell at cost or minimal margins, one can only guess...

[Sakkura]

17 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

On a technical level, you're right about 2K vs 4K both being "not exactly correct", but 2160p is near enough to 4K that I think it's nitpicking to say it's off. It does oversell the resolution, but only a bit. Whereas 1440p is 2.5K. Using this system, 1080p would be "2K".

 

I disagree that 1440p would be more worth it for TV's. Why? If I'm going to up the resolution, I might as well just jump to 4K. 1440p doesn't offer enough of a resolution increase to be especially noticeable for the majority of content consumed on a TV (Movies and TV). But you can look at it in different ways of course. The difference between 1440p and 2160p isn't much, true, but neither is the difference between 1080p and 1440p.

At any reasonable combination of size and distance for a TV, you'll be unable to tell the difference between 1440p and 4K. And even if you get up close, 1440p is a more noticeable upgrade over 1080p than 4K is over 1440p.

[SteveGrabowski0]

4k at 30 fps will be doable. It sounds like Scorpio will get a cut down and downclocked Vega chip since they're claiming 6 TFLOPS. My GTX 970 can run Witcher 3 at 4k medium at 28-35 fps, so a seriously cut down Vega chip should have no problem whatsoever doing 4k @ 30 fps, especially considering Witcher 3 is still one of the most graphically intense titles out there and since Polaris should outdo GM204.