After yesterday’s reveal of the PS4 Pro, Microsoft has responded to talk up its new system. In an interview with Polygon, the company said the Scorpio’s advantages “will be obvious.”
"I feel pretty good about the decisions we've made," Albert Penello, who serves as senior director of product management and planning at Xbox, said to Polygon. "I feel good about what we've done with the Xbox One S. Both we and Sony are investing in 4K as the future of the console space, and we have a history of adding features to our hardware."
In the interview, Penello mentioned how the Xbox One S seemingly is more feature-rich than even the PS4 Pro. One thing he highlighted was 4K UHD Blu-ray support, which the Xbox One S has and the PS4 Pro does not. When asked if the Scorpio will support 4K UHD Blu-rays, Panello said there would be support, but a Microsoft rep joined in the conversation, adding it was Microsoft’s “intention to deliver it.” Basically, it seems there will be 4K UHD Blu-ray support, but it isn’t confirmed just yet.
As for computing power, we know the PS4 Pro is clocked at 4.2 TFLOPS while the Scorpio has boasted a performance of 6 TFLOPS. "The performance delta will be obvious," Penello told Polygon. There was no mention of how much RAM the Scorpio would have though.
Another question fans will have is how much the Scorpio will cost. With a bump in power as big as Microsoft is claiming, surely there will be a significant bump in price to compensate. Obviously, Penello didn’t confirm any price points already, but made sure to include that the price would reflect a point console gamers should be comfortable with. "We know it's important to deliver an experience that demonstrates the power gap between [the PS4 Pro and Scorpio] at a price that makes sense to console gamers,” he said.
Panello was also unsure if Microsoft could patch in HDR support to older consoles, like Sony says it will be doing for all PS4 models. "Until I know more about how they're doing it, I can't speak to whether or not we can offer something similar," he said.
With PS4 Pro getting third-party support to bring games up to new visual standards, Polygon asked if this work would also benefit games on the Scorpio. Panello wasn’t positive about how Sony is doing things, but hoped everything would play nicely across the new consoles.
For more comparisons of the new consoles, be sure to check out our PS4 Pro vs. Xbox One article as well.
So what do you think? Are you more excited for the PS4 Pro or the Xbox Scorpio? Do you think you’ll skip these upgraded consoles altogether and just stick with your original PS4 or Xbox One? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
