What they really need to do is maybe just start completely over on the whole Xbox Dashboard.
For something that could be so simple and easy, the whole experience of trying to use the Xbox for anything other than playing a game is insanely frustrating. Every time I sit down to try to use it I'm just tearing my hair out!<p>It's been, what, over a decade they've been working on that Dashboard and it has always been just a steaming pile of trash.<p>Everything from initial setup trying to make accounts for the kids, to setting up payment methods, trying to switch between users constantly as things are authorized in one place or another, trying to install apps, constantly turning it on to find its forcing an hour of updates that must be installed to basically unbrick it. The media player app is insultingly bad. The App Store is a wasteland. The UI is a total train wreck.<p>I went to install Amazon's app to stream some Prime shows last week. You would think probably some other people have tried to do this before, what could go wrong? What a mistake. App constantly crashing, took over an hour, including power cycling the Xbox twice before I get it to the point where I was actually watching a show. This for what is a < 5 minute process on a smartphone.<p>Every time I try to do anything with that infernal machine, I just end up tearing my hair out. I really don't understand how they have millions of users and so much basic shit Just Doesn't Work.<p>And don't get me started on the UI..... Everything I want to do buried the absolute maximum amount of clicks away from where I would expect to look for it.<p>I try not to complain about it usually because it just gets my blood boiling how could MS put out such absolute garbage? Please tell me I'm not alone in feeling this way :-)<p>The hardware rat race is great and all, but for a platform where they have Apple-esque control I would have expected two orders of magnitude better results than what MS has managed to deliver in 2017 for a living room experience.
If you own a PS4 or an X1 and the money to buy a PS4 Pro or Scorpio, it seems like the best move is to buy the upgrade of the platform you <i>don't</i> have. Then you've got access to both platforms' exclusives, and at least one new-spec machine for the games that aren't exclusive.<p>I think the most interesting thing is going to see how compatibility works out long-term for Scorpio. What will the cross-compat story be for the <i>next</i> console, and the one after that? Will they re-platform and lose compatibility again (and bring it back via emulation) or keep re-spec'ing the current platform? When will we see games that will play on Scorpio but not X1?
I'm glad we're seeing utilisation at the 66% level. That extra power is going to be mighty useful for VR. It's going to be really interesting to see what Microsoft reveal there.<p>I have an Xbox One and a Switch. Personally, I love this combination and Scorpio could be a great upgrade depending on the VR story. While I do miss out on some PS4 games I'd love to play, I don't have enough hours to play the games I already have.<p>The ideological gap between Switch and the rest of the industry is widening. No doubt the Switch is a cheaper platform to develop for (4K assets are a huge burden) but is that enough of a drawcard? Likewise, are consoles like Scorpio and PS4 Pro becoming too difficult and expensive to develop for, unless you are a AAA studio? The bar gets set so high that smaller studios will find it harder and harder to keep up. I can easily foresee a future where the Switch has an amazing selection of first party, Nintendo games and a killer catalogue of indies, whereas Xbox and PS4 own the third-party, AAA market.
Note: Eurogamer has the official exclusive for this information.<p>The tech is incrementally better than the PS4 Pro, but the price is unknown and could be problematic if released at $499 compared to the PS4 Pro's $399. And whether developers will take full advantage of that power.
Direct X CPU instruction that were handled by the CPU is now handled by the GPU!<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE2hNrq1Zxs&feature=youtu.be&t=3m5s" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE2hNrq1Zxs&feature=youtu.be...</a>
Maybe I am completely off the marks here, and I'm sorry if this is off topic, but as someone who follows very closely what Apple is (or isn't?) doing in their Pro machines I am very curious how those specs compare to what everyone is asking for from Apple. The RAM is obviously low, fine, but it sounds like the CPU and GPU are significantly more capable than anything that Apple is shipping right now, and Microsoft will sell this thing at a fraction of the price that Apple will sell any pro hardware. What am I missing? Where is the big gap in component cost? How is something like an Xbox so different, and so much cheaper, than a pro level desktop?
Does anyone know anything about the "Hovis method" they reference for fine tuning the power profile for each chip? I'm having a tough time understanding how tweaking the voltage rails from board to board can improve power consumption/heat dissipation without impacting CPU performance.
The Xbox Scorpio SoC is RX480 again, Polaris chip on steroids - coupled with more GDDR5 6.8GHz@326GB/s BW vRAM 12GB with reserved to OS @1.5-2GB Plus a quad core Jaguar cluster added in with Vapor Chamber & full DX12 HW improvements. That should be a slightly OCed GTX 1060 level of perf looking from the specsheet, Plus they are banking on that DX12 due to the CPU being Jaguar still, Also the GCN HW of the AMD thus helping it to boost the ASync compute. Prev gen was also a RX480 based but cutdown chip less than cut down GM204 perf (<980M)<p>And It did 4K forza which was a direct port from the Studio 10 to the Scorpio from XB1 @60FPS/~64% GPU usage, Mobile GTX 1070 and up should be still outperforming it & when it comes to proper optimized titles like BF1 / TF2 / TW3 / MEC etc will aid further to render more details, Also running old 4K forza on Console GFX options vs PC GFX options is not an apples to apples comparison. Note that TF figure on AMD and Nvidia aren't same either...<p>Consoles can never reach PC levels of detailing due to the market and targeted audience. I'm a PC gamer, I can't stand to the degraded visuals on the Consoles, Also the Nvidia Tessellation is superior to AMD. Sad part is due to the % of market the PC games get downgraded / unoptimized mess due to these consoles Also the XB1Scorpio doesn't add any significant advantage over the PS4Pro because of less than stellar exlc. titles & Checkered board rendering used. Finally the native 4K@60Hz or 30 isn't out, I highly doubt an RX480 can run the games at 60FPS 4K, the power isn't just there for the recent games and upcoming powerful engines developed with Pascal HW will outperform this weak chip soon..
It's interesting that, for the second time this week, a big company has given journalists an exclusive and sort of intimate look at their future roadmap instead of saving it for big keynote surprises.<p>Between leaks making nothing ever a surprise anymore and the general jadedness at products never living up to their keynote claims, I wonder if this signals a kind of paradigm shift in "how to hype a product". Certainly all the Apple commentators seemed very pleased that Apple was breaking with their traditional radio silence, and this made me much more interested in Scorpio than I was recently, since I can see from a skeptical source that it's not just hot air.
Hrm, I can't help but think that despite this being only slightly <i>more</i> than Sony's PS4 Pro spec-wise, that difference is going to matter a lot because it seems to be the difference between being able to <i>output</i> (upscaled) 4k and being able to <i>render</i> 4k. We'll see if that turns out to be true when the Scorpio Xbox One actually launches (this kind of pre-release article is very prone to botching facts like this). If it does hold then this machine actually has some hope of switching the preferred platform for console games back over to Xbox One.
I hope this is more than just putting out 4k games. Most people don't have 4k TVs, and, very importantly, for those that do, most don't have a big enough one for how far away they sit.<p>I'm thinking of upgrading to a 65-inch OLED this year, and from my couch of about 10 feet away (maybe a hair closer), I won't be able to tell 1080p from 4k. And that's a pretty big TV!<p>I would much rather see Scorpio games at 1080/60 fps with more effects, more polygons and more complex lighting.
Not mentioned in the article, but apparently it will also support AMD FreeSync.<p><a href="http://i.imgur.com/GUCJSAH.png" rel="nofollow">http://i.imgur.com/GUCJSAH.png</a>
This is MS admitting defeat for this gen and going for an early next gen. BC gives it the mid-gen excuse though. This is a good move though and will put Xbox back on the map.
I'm excited by the specs, especially given that Red Dead Redemption 2, Battlefront 2, Call of Duty WW2, and Destiny 2 are all hitting this holiday. Should be the best way to play those games.<p>Although I wish they had more unique games coming out alongside that stuff. Playing Zelda on Switch is a good reminder that eye candy doesn't matter all that much after the novelty wears off.