
Inside the next Xbox: Project Scorpio and its brand-new dev kit - richardboegli
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/295800/Inside_the_next_Xbox_Project_Scorpio_and_its_brandnew_dev_kit.php
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nlawalker
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.

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 _buying and owning_ ,
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.

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".

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.

~~~
merb
well the question for the game industry should be: do we really want to target
a audience who doesn't care about the "fun" part and more about the "good
locking" part?

\- actually I'm more a nintendo person, because their games are fun and they
don't care about all this fps/monster machine, thingy. I mean I don't care
about Call of Duty 1000 or any other re-release with cool looking graphics but
minor game play enhancements. well the pc, xbox and ps4 also has a lot of
games that are fresh and new and make fun or even a re-release of a game can
be great, but most of them are just sickening and after a while I stop playing
them. It's really really sad where this industry goes. Well pushing graphics
is good, but overdoing it while limiting the fun part, is bad.

tl;dr fun > graphics

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Asooka
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.

~~~
ascagnel_
They've announced already that Scorpio is just the codename; they have yet to
announce the shipping product name. I'd guess they'd do that at E3, alongside
pricing.

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gambiting
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.

~~~
MaulingMonkey
Our I.T. guy grabbed some desktop shelving from a local office store to help
stack mine when I had devkits. Sadly I can't find the exact model online to
share. Between the XB1s, XB360, PS4s, iPads, Windows Tablets, Mac, and Windows
dev boxes, monitors and HDMI switches, I also needed an extra desk. I also
added some nails to a plank to help make a (tiny) wall of tablets...

Porting things has it's perks :D

EDIT: "Shelves" were probably actually monitor stands, roughly like these -
stacked a little percariously but it did the trick (tm):
[https://www.amazon.com/Allsop-Monitor-18-Inch-platform-
keybo...](https://www.amazon.com/Allsop-Monitor-18-Inch-platform-
keyboard/dp/B003M2YDE2/ref=pd_sim_229_7?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B003M2YDE2&pd_rd_r=MFWGGTCWP2BF9D645PAD&pd_rd_w=8CMIp&pd_rd_wg=7UZNG&psc=1&refRID=MFWGGTCWP2BF9D645PAD)

~~~
theandrewbailey
My work laptop is on one of those stands. I got it for free, then bought a
Dremel to cut out some metal between two of those holes so that a USB hub
could be plugged in from underneath. Not bad.

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microcolonel
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.

~~~
Negitivefrags
How were they misusing the term?

~~~
microcolonel
There is only one "draw call" in D3D12,
ID3D12GraphicsCommandList::DrawInstanced. Strictly speaking, DrawInstanced
isn't even a _call_ anymore, it is just part of a recorded command buffer.

When they say draw calls, I imagine they mean that they added D3D12 command
stream handling to the firmware on the GPU. It's arguably nonsensical to say
"it’s designed to incorporate basic, oft-used DirectX12 draw calls into the
GPU command processor itself".

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6stringmerc
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.

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...

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.

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.

Give me my mouse, my keyboard, my console to tweak my views (FOV 110,
weapon_on 0) and let me do my thing.

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.

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...

~~~
jamesgeck0
I can't tell if this is sarcastic or not. Mouse precision is so much more
accurate than controllers that the Overwatch team literally considers using
KB/M on consoles to be cheating.

~~~
6stringmerc
It is tongue in cheek. I don't want to play unless there's a choice. KB/M vs
console controllers. Pick your poison, get down on it. I happen to think using
anything but KB/M is dumbing-down handicapping. Canon fodder takes many forms.

