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Microsoft Xbox Project Scorpio Puts Out 6 TFLOPs On Par With Current Gaming PCs (hothardware.com)
MojoKid quotes a report form HotHardware: Microsoft is hoping to usher in a new era in console gaming just over a year from now. While the company is just a month away from launching the Xbox One S refresh in the U.S., Project Scorpio is the console that really has gamers talking. During E3, Microsoft provided scant details on the console, only cluing us in to the fact that it would support virtual reality, 4K gaming, and push 6 TFLOPs of computing power. Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, CD Projekt Red's Principal Narrative Designer, had a few things to say about that last bullet point regarding compute performance. If you recall, AMD's newly introduced Radeon RX 480 offers peak performance of 5.8 TFLOPs, which puts it in close proximity of Microsoft's Project Scorpio. But of course, trying to compare consoles to PCs using this stat alone isn't exactly apples to oranges, though Tomaszkiewicz explains, "For sure [Scorpio] will have better looking games," Tomaszkiewicz said. "If this was available when we were working on Wild Hunt, I would expect similar quality that we have on PC right now or even better maybe." HotHardware's report goes on to mention that once new console hardware is introduced, it's frozen for years at a time without any updates. Therefore, it would only be a short while before PCs would completely outcompete it in terms of performance. Also, given the fact that Project Scorpio is not arriving until late 2017 at the earliest, the 6 TFLOPs of power won't seem like much when compared to the new cycle of high-end GPUs with far superior performance. Tomaszkiewicz agrees, adding, "New graphic cards are being released very often and more often than the new consoles being released. So I think it will put Scorpio on par with the PC is that we have at that point. But I think PC is growing so fast that it'll outpace [Scorpio]."
project scorpio is not the console that "really has gamers talking". microsoft has lost this console cycle, and is not going to catch up with a new half-cycle-release. it's still an xbox (or an "xbone", as the more pornographically inclined would say), and not going to lose it's bad reputation as easy.
So yes, sounds pretty much as you would expect. The hardware in the console doesn't change but it also needs to hit a certain price point at launch. Usually the hardware of a console is sold at about a break even price point right when launched and profits come from game licensing and eventual production cost improvements. Given that the typical price of a new console these days is around $400 or $500 you would never expect the state of the art GPU to be included as those parts alone are going to exceed that price point. So yes, this years new crop of GPU designs is likely a safe bet for this mass market device launch next year. Remember for the $400 price you still have to include storage, processor, power supply, enclosure, packaging and all the other bits and pieces.
So sure, a current gaming PC costing 3x or more of a console is more powerful and will continue to outpace the console performance as time marches on. Apples and oranges. For pure gaming performance the consoles usually do pretty good on bang for the buck.
When you develop for console you develop for the lowest common denominator. This IS the advantage you have. Now you have two console with the same targeted environment, one slightly better at throughput than the other, and initially with lower numbers. Would you target that, add millions of dollars worth of development in bell and whistle , only to have barely a better sales, and risk the ire or their "lower" console brethen because the screenshot presented were only for scorpio ? And if you develop *for* scorpio you will miss on xbox one 1.0 player.
I know that some hold that console generation should be shorter or whatnot (e.g. totalbuiscuit on youtube argue that that the last generation was too long) but the splitting ehre will make it so probably nobody with a sane mind will invest into getting more power out of scorpio and having different config and development on an already expansive console development without real benefit sales wise (at least initially). And if nobody is adding bell and whistle, why should people buy the new one when the old one less expansive does as well ? Remember console fit one niche : the one where you get a hardware with known spec and develop for it. Scorpio break that. It will add confusion on buyer, reviewer, developper side.
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Can I finance it by making game makers pay me to be allowed to make games for the system?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Erh... no.
Console hardware stays the same, so although it may theoretically not perform as well as the top tier hardware available, it can often have better looking games...
How? If anything, the reason this seemed true in the past was that TVs were blurry enough that you couldn't tell the pixels apart, which worked as a kinda-sorta el cheapo anti aliasing effect. This isn't quite true anymore with HDTV.
A console game does not need to cater to lower spec hardware, nor does it need to deal with disparate configurations or other background software impeding the game, nor is your memory wasted by os features that are unrelated to gaming.
You'd have a point here, if it mattered. Few current games give half a shit about low-spec hardware ("if you can't run it, you just need a better rig") and ram is by some margin and then some the cheapest bottleneck to get rid of. On top of that, current consoles don't even have that advantage anymore that there is no OS to get in the way, they ALL do have an OS by now. And usually one that sucks donkey balls at being an OS.
You can even program the hardware directly, bypassing the overhead caused by the various abstraction layers.
Sorry, nope again. That USED to be the case with old school consoles where the cartridge was actually part of the machine to the point where code execution was partly done on the cartridge, i.e. you had nearly TOTAL control over the CPU in such a console. That hasn't been the case for well over a decade now. No console maker would be "stupid" enough to allow you to run arbitrary code on its machine, how long do you think any kind of DRM would hold in such an environment?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
One of the great parts of the console world was standard performance. We were all on the same level. Our games looked and ran equally good. Most importantly they ran as well as the developer could make them run with exactly our hardware. Now we not only have cross platform games losing the ability to squeeze the last performance out of platforms with some games running horribly on one platform but not the other, now we also have multiple consoles in a single release cycle to play with?
So consoles are going to lose the "it just works" benefit over the TV. Computers now can work with most console hardware, games are rarely console exclusives these days, and Microsoft is trying to unify the platforms.
What is the purpose of the console?