After so many attempts to innovate and bring new ideas to the console space, Microsoft must be relieved (and kicking themselves a bit) to finally realize that all that their most vocal consumers ever wanted was bigger iron.<p>I sense that the console market has picked up a lot of "performance enthusiasm" from the PC community. The tried-and-true tech/car analogy works here - a lot of people love building, or even just <i>buying and owning</i>, really powerful cars. Do a search on Youtube for "[game] framerate [test|comparison]" and you'll find a zillion hits, many of them with details down to patch versions, driver versions, and detailed settings. The number one complaint I saw of the new greatest-game-of-all-time Zelda game was "framerate," and the web was flooded with framerate tests as soon as a patch was released. A common meme in Reddit's PC-building community is dropping $X000 building a monster rig in order to install a big new game just so they can jack it up to max settings and watch it run at 100FPS, then shutting it off and returning to browsing and Minecraft.<p>That said, it's a little surprising to me to read all the positive feedback on this, especially around the price. Game-related Reddit threads are usually full of hate on any topic that involves paying for something, but all I see for this is "I will drop $500 for this, day 1, I'd even consider it at $600; guess I better get that $1500-$2000 4K TV I've been looking at too; let me know when the VR's ready and I'll put $600 on that as well." Just a couple years ago, speculation about a move like this was widely poo-pooed by industry analysts, who said that bringing the PC's complexities of hardware upgrades to developers and consumers would kill the only thing consoles had going for them - simplicity - and leave consumers wondering why they're expected to shell out $X00 just a few years after buying the last new box. Now the overwhelming consensus appears to be "4K at 60FPS or don't bother".<p>With hardware standardization increasing, compatibility becoming the norm, and the focus on power, I think there's going to be a really interesting convergence between the PC and console market in the next few years.
Maybe unrelated but it's quite confusing to call the second revision of the original hardware the "One S", and name the hardware upgrade the "One Scorpio". Hopefully they'll pick some other name not starting with S for the final name.
Hehe, I love that they shown those stacked - my biggest issue with X1 devkits is that they have the vents on top, so I have two on my desk but can't put anything on top of them because the console will overheat.
Annoying misuse of the term "draw calls". :- (
Also, the fancy transfer cable seems to be basically just a USB 3.0 connector, and by their description it gets about 3.4GiBit/s. Pretty okay.
Until I can use a keyboard and mouse in FPS settings against people with controllers, I don't give a fuck. I came up the hard way and hate the exploits possible in pretty much every competitive game. In that regard, I want to have the real advantage I care about. Precision. Finger agility.<p>Until a console gives me that option, to lay waste to Player and (1)Player and (2)Player like Half-Life gave me joy back in the day and leveled me up beyond what I could've imagined by bunny hopping and tau jumping and using audio A3D to at least hang with the best...Chosen1, Neo, aCiDtRiP, 007 and more...<p>I'm an old now. I'm not going to let a bunch of teenagers talk shit to me with a mic unless I can lay waste to their feeble understanding of victory by attrition. I've found it's uncomfortably hard to use a controller to walk up to a victim and use the squat/crouch function to tea bag their carcass.<p>When console gaming gets with the mainline of competitive PC gaming, it might be worth it. I've got no use for MMOs and shit like that. I'm an FPS/driving guy. I've played Australians and Croations alike no matter the lag, we competed fair. Console interfaces are fucking garbage.<p>Give me my mouse, my keyboard, my console to tweak my views (FOV 110, weapon_on 0) and let me do my thing.<p>Apparently this is not the best business model. Huh. For a minute there I was (1)Player getting a face full of Glock or crowbar, but life is like that. Spawn. Run. Die. Repeat.<p>Oh, just for the record, if Gabe debuts HL3 as an Xbox Scorpio exclusive I will take money out of my retirement fund just to get in on it. Only if I can use my keyboard and mouse though. Always good to temper expectations...