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Xbox Scorpio Making "Amazing Progress," - Phil Spencer

mrklaw said:
And even from just reactions in this thread it seems to be working. I dont understand what is so expensive - die shrink or more mature production means larger APU is possible at similar cost. PS4 pro is more than double the performance of PS4 but at the same price as launch. Scorpio is about 50% more, 12 months later. I can totally see it being in the ballpark of $399.

Only wildcard I can see is if they go for separate CPU/GPU rather than an APU (maybe apu would be too big?). That could increase costs and allow them to go with zen for CPU. But I don't know how that would affect BC
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Isn't scorpio supposed to be almost 5 x more powerful than the original. 4 years later, 5 x more power, 12gigs of GDDR5, still likely has ESRAM (or perhaps it doesn't thus creating a compatibility headache) amongst other improvements. A realistic approach would be to expect a price north of $499 unless a loss is involved. Fabrication costs go up quite considerably depending on the size of each chip and it's unlikely the scorpio APU will be the same size as the original's.
 
It will be between 449 and 499, depending on its added value to existing consoles. Higher specs isn't enough, MS is a "one more thing" company now that iintroduces features in their products that makes you want to pay a premium price for.
 
I don't think there's anything wrong with $499. If people want a premium product, they should be prepared to pay for it. Simple as. The Xbox One S is on the market anyway, so it's not as if the price of entry for Xbox One is going to be expensive. Having a cheaper model gives them room to price Scorpio appropriately.
 
Cre8 said:
After watching today's MS keynote and the way they priced their premium products. The Surface Studio at $4,000, new Surface Pro at $2,500 and Phil stated that this is a premium XBox(Scorpio). This aint gonna be under $500 for sure....
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He also said it'll fit in with consumer expectation of consumer price point for consoles, I'm hoping for $399, suspect 449 more likely.
 
DjRalford said:
Yes


Sony shows a console, shares the specs, shows off the games, some in Native 4k, and people are like, it can't run games any better than PS4.

MS talks about a console that they don't even know what components are going to be in it, pulls a number out its anus and people are hailing it as the 2nd coming of jesus.
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Let the anger flow through you. Soon, your journey to the dark side will be complete.
 
MaulerX said:
Listening to Panos today talking about some of the nifty cooling techniques in those "premium" Surface products had me thinking.... Can they possibly shock us with a Scorpio the same size or even smaller that the XB1S? One can dream.
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"Here's the new Xbox controller... BUT WAIT it's also the console!"
 
jabberwocker said:
Its all moot with play anywhere. By the time Scorpio is out we will be in the land of 15tf nvidia volta videocards that will be pushing the 4X the performance of the scorpio at a base level. I understand the point of the best console but since play anywhere went live the console power race is pretty much pointless.
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I don't have a horse in this race, I tend to jump ship between platforms depending what I think is right for me at the time, but I do agree that play anywhere confuses this situation. Is it Microsoft's intention to use the console to get more people into the ecosystem? More people paying for live and first party games?

If this hadn't been announced I'd have bought an S this Christmas but decided to hold off so they've effectively lost a (returning) user there. Equally I cancelled my PSPro preorder because I cannot see enough justification for it currently even though I do have a 4k HDR tv so it's not like either of them are impressing me right now...
 
Curufinwe said:
The PS4 didn't drop $100 in its first year, but the Pro will?
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PS4 didn't get a price drop for almost two years, and then it was only $50.
 
MatrixMan.EXE said:
I don't think there's anything wrong with $499. If people want a premium product, they should be prepared to pay for it. Simple as. The Xbox One S is on the market anyway, so it's not as if the price of entry for Xbox One is going to be expensive. Having a cheaper model gives them room to price Scorpio appropriately.
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One clever point of these hardware upgrades is that it can help people enter your ecosystem before they can afford your premium configuration. Many people can think "well the Scorpio looks great, but it's too expensive, I'll wait for a price drop in a year or two...but until then I can start playing on One S and my games will carry over when I upgrade !".
It also works with PS4/Pro btw, although the benefit of running older games on the new configuration is a bit confusing right now with the need of patches or not.
 
Dabanton said:
I'm hoping to see Crackdown as a Scorpio launch title a crazy ass '4K' version of that would be amazing. That and day one Scorpio update patches for this years crop of Xbox exclusives would suit me down to the ground.
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Yeah Crackdown 3 sounds crazy ambitious and like the perfect title to show off Scorpio. I'd hope for improved destruction or a bigger world in the Scorpio version (if possible).

4K is def the future but I hope we see other improvements in Scorpio games other than a simple resolution bump.
 
Razgreez said:
Isn't scorpio supposed to be almost 5 x more powerful than the original. 4 years later, 5 x more power, 12gigs of GDDR5, still likely has ESRAM (or perhaps it doesn't thus creating a compatibility headache) amongst other improvements. A realistic approach would be to expect a price north of $499 unless a loss is involved. Fabrication costs go up quite considerably depending on the size of each chip and it's unlikely the scorpio APU will be the same size as the original's.
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I think it's very likely to be a similar size APU to the original XBO APU. I highly doubt they keep the ESRAM, which took up as much space on the APU as their GPU did. Combine that with the die shrink and it's not hard to imagine a slightly larger CPU and a 6TF GPU fitting on the same size APU. Also, the 12GB will be more cost effective than the 8GB in the PS4 back in 2013. Nothing in the known specs suggests this thing will cost more to produce than the original XBO unit cost in 2013.

As a side note, lets not all forget that the PS4Pro is likely being sold at a profit. They are selling it at launch PS4 prices, but it should cost a fair bit less to produce with a slightly smaller APU and cheaper RAM when compared to the 2013 PS4. Comparing the PS4Pro to the Scorpio doesn't make a whole lot of sense when one is likely profitable and the other is likely built to sell at loss similar to the PS4 and XBO with an aim to expand market share and active users.
 
Aceofspades said:
Its going to be $399, its gonna be slightly beefed up APU, compared to PRO.

PRO is $399 this year, Scorpio shouldn't be much higher than that especially for late 2017 release.
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They are running on the bleeding edge of the technology curve, depending on hardware that's not even finalised yet and production nodes that are in their infancy.

That usually means delays and high costs which could get higher if manufacturing yields aren't up to snuff. Sonys took a step back from that it appears for these reasons so it will be interesting to see how this pans out for MS. History suggests there may be a bumpy road ahead for them.
 
RenditMan said:
They are running on the bleeding edge of the technology curve, depending on hardware that's not even finalised yet and production nodes that are in their infancy.

That usually means delays and high costs which could get higher if manufacturing yields aren't up to snuff. Sonys took a step back from that it appears for these reasons so it will be interesting to see how this pans out for MS. History suggests there may be a bumpy road ahead for them.
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I thought Sony were using what's available this year, MS next year. What's the difference?
 
I think the Scorpio is going to be $500. Maybe they will have an upgraded model for $600, but I just do not see thing "premium price" device being cheaper than the XBox One when it first came out.
 
TAJ said:
PS4 didn't get a price drop for almost two years, and then it was only $50.
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They won't need to if Scorpio is $499 or $599.

If MS makes a $599 machine tho, i can't wait to see what the games look like on the thing. I mean that thing could have a liquid cooled OC'd jaguar at 4GHz lol
 
The way he talks about it, it'll be at least 399$, that much is certain. 499$ hmm I don't know, I think that'd be too pricey with PS4 Pro already out for 1 year and ready for the first round of price cuts.

I'm going with 449$ ;)
 
Cthulhu_Steev said:
Not sure what's confusing about 'it's a PS4'
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It's a PS4. But more powerful. But not for older games. Unless they get a patch. Will that specific game get a patch ? Don't know, it depends on the developers.
It's not really as straightforward as it could be.
 
Razgreez said:
Isn't scorpio supposed to be almost 5 x more powerful than the original. 4 years later, 5 x more power, 12gigs of GDDR5, still likely has ESRAM (or perhaps it doesn't thus creating a compatibility headache) amongst other improvements. A realistic approach would be to expect a price north of $499 unless a loss is involved. Fabrication costs go up quite considerably depending on the size of each chip and it's unlikely the scorpio APU will be the same size as the original's.
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I think comparisons to the original say more about where the base Xbox One was in 2013 than where Scorpio will be in 2017, wrt positioning vs the higher end. The base XB1 spec was significantly under what was possible for the time. The headline Scorpio spec ('6tf') doesn't seem out of line for what you'd expect from a $399 console next holiday, IMO.

It's true that other complications from the original XB1 design, like esram chiefly, could spoil an attempt to hit that figure, but I'm optimistic that they'll be able to get around that.
 
Guys it will be 399, i think he uses the expression "premium console" to make it clear that it's not going to be a mid gen upgrade like ps4 pro, scorpio is a generational upgrade, it's the xb2, not the xb1.5, we are finally entering in an era of pc like consoles that ends the era of incompatibility between successor and predecessor.
 
Alx said:
It's a PS4. But more powerful. But not for older games. Unless they get a patch. Will that specific game get a patch ? Don't know, it depends on the developers.
It's not really as straightforward as it could be.
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It plays PS4 games. You're making this needlessly complicated just to make a stupid point.
 
Cthulhu_Steev said:
It plays PS4 games. You're making this needlessly complicated just to make a stupid point.
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But the whole points of getting a more powerful console is to have it run games better than the less powerful one. Or at least it is for many people interested in a console upgrade. If people only cared about running PS4 games, there would be no point in the pro, since the vanilla PS4 already does that.
 
My guess would be by the time Scorpio releases:

Xbox One S: 249 USD
Xbox One Scorpio 1TB: 499 USD
Xbox One Scorpio 3TB: 599 USD

With Scorpio being way more powerful than the PS4Pro, I'm guessing Sony will also have to ship a PS5 (which I guess is why they didn't hype the PS4Pro as a next-gen system at all) that'll be able to compete in terms of performance, otherwise we'll see a lot of games running at 60fps on Scorpio and only at 30-40fps on PS4Pro and that wouldn't be great at all for Sony.
 
Alx said:
But the whole points of getting a more powerful console is to have it run games better than the less powerful one. Or at least it is for many people interested in a console upgrade. If people only cared about running PS4 games, there would be no point in the pro, since the vanilla PS4 already does that.
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And that's not the original point you were making only two posts ago, but hey whatever. I'm out.
 
leeh said:
I'm presuming, or hoping, they'll do a 500GB variant at the 399 price point.
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I wouldn't bet on it. A lot of games today already blast past 50gb download sizes. Once you add 4k into the mix, you'll need to up texture resolutions a lot and then you're probably looking at 100gb+ downloads. 500gb wouldn't really make sense at this point.
 
Cthulhu_Steev said:
And that's not the original point you were making only two posts ago, but hey whatever. I'm out.
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My point was precisely that the PS4 pro model could be more confusing for customers, since you can't give a direct yes/no answer to the simple question : "will my game run better on pro ?".
 
Yoday said:
They certainly aren't going to make a profit at $400 like the PS4 Pro likely does, but they aren't going to take nearly as high of a loss as some seem to think. An API with a 6TF GPU and a better CPU should come in at a similar size to the XBO APU, and by the end of 2017 cost may even be lower depending on the maturity of 14nm. The only other major factor is RAM, and 12GB of higher speed GDDR5 will probably cost a fair bit less in 2017 than the 8GB Sony used in 2013. If they do take a loss, it will be on par with the loss they took on XBO minus Kinect. I'm not entirely sure why people expect this to be $500 or more, outside of a complete lack of any kind of technical understanding that is. A $500 console on 14nm in 2017 would either be quite profitable, have a gigantic APU with a ton of RAM, or have discrete parts.
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Should be in a $399-449 range and not a cent more...or if it's bundled with Cyber Punk or RedDead 2 I'll gladly take it for $500 hunnit.
 
Bsigg12 said:
They're due for a new Halo as well even with Halo Wars 2 dropping in February.

Hopefully we see updates to Scalebound, Gears 4, and Forza Horizon 3.
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Halo 4 to Halo 5 was three years, I'm sure it will be the same time between 5 and 6.

Releasing Halo 6 next year just doesn't make sense to me, they need to give the game some of time. Also, releasing a Halo game with the console would be a waste of the IP. The game is a system seller (not so much nowadays) so why release it when the console will sell anyway?
 
Nothing from Phil so far. We are gamers, we want know everything. If you don't want show all then don't do like this one.

I think it is way too advanced to show mid-gen upgrade that not coming many years as I have moved on to PC.
 
m23 said:
Halo 4 to Halo 5 was three years, I'm sure it will be the same time between 5 and 6.

Releasing Halo 6 next year just doesn't make sense to me, they need to give the game some of time. Also, releasing a Halo game with the console would be a waste of the IP. The game is a system seller (not so much nowadays) so why release it when the console will sell anyway?
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They ain't releasing halo 6 next year, they will launch with halo 3 anniversary with a revamped halo 5 multiplayer suite. Halo 6 will be in 2018.


I just hope that they don't overlay the graphics on h3 anni so they can push the eye candy
 
m23 said:
Halo 4 to Halo 5 was three years, I'm sure it will be the same time between 5 and 6.

Releasing Halo 6 next year just doesn't make sense to me, they need to give the game some of time. Also, releasing a Halo game with the console would be a waste of the IP. The game is a system seller (not so much nowadays) so why release it when the console will sell anyway?
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This, and they already have quite a few games that have been delayed to 2017 or later that they will prob release with Scorpio. No need for a halo game just yet.

-halo wars 2
-sea of thieves
-scalebound
-crackdown
-
will have a good laugh if they have ready at release Reach Remastered for both Scorpio and the Xbox one.
Not to mention a similar plan for performance bumps for some games like Sony has planned. It should be an interesting year of waiting 👍
 
2+2=5 said:
Guys it will be 399, i think he uses the expression "premium console" to make it clear that it's not going to be a mid gen upgrade like ps4 pro, scorpio is a generational upgrade, it's the xb2, not the xb1.5, we are finally entering in an era of pc like consoles that ends the era of incompatibility between successor and predecessor.
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That's completely opposite of what "premium console" sounds to me. But I agree that even if there will be a model for $499 there will be one for $399 as well. This is likely the reason why they even wait a year more than Sony till Scorpio's introduction. Would make no sense to wait a year and then launch for $100 more.
 
I think ms is calling anything over $399 a premium console as to not turn off the user base. While also, I hope they realize anything over $449 may turn off people anyway.. Unless the power/performance exceeds what there initial claims have been (which to me would mean above 6TF, aka 6.5-7TF which I highly doubt imo.
 
$499 is perfectly reasonable for the hardware the Scorpio has. If you can't sell a half decent console at that price these days then the core console business is screwed.

+2TF GPU, +4GB RAM, +UHD Player and maybe a better CPU doesn't come for free, even a year later. I doubt they could turn a profit on it at $399.
 
krang said:
Why would they sell it without a controller?
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All Xbox One peripherals continue to work - it keeps the price down.

I have about 4 controllers now (including an Elite), last thing I need is another controller.

I wondered if they'd do the same but then again there's always constant improvements in controller - headphones jack, Bluetooth support, etc. so I suspect they'll ship with the "latest and greatest" controller.
 
thomasmahler said:
I wouldn't bet on it. A lot of games today already blast past 50gb download sizes. Once you add 4k into the mix, you'll need to up texture resolutions a lot and then you're probably looking at 100gb+ downloads. 500gb wouldn't really make sense at this point.
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As Microsoft allow the usage of external drives, I think it makes perfect sense for them to release a 500GB version to try and keep the costs down.
 
justsomeguy said:
All Xbox One peripherals continue to work - it keeps the price down.

I have about 4 controllers now (including an Elite), last thing I need is another controller.

I wondered if they'd do the same but then again there's always constant improvements in controller - headphones jack, Bluetooth support, etc. so I suspect they'll ship with the "latest and greatest" controller.
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The OG XB1 controller works on the S, doesn't mean they sell the S without a pad, though.

Imagine someone not so clued up going and buying the most affordable version of the console only to find out they've got no way of interacting with it...
 
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