The Xbox One Scorpio and PlayStation 4 Pro are on their way, but not entirely in the same manner. Microsoft and Sony, the companies behind the midgeneration consoles, respectively, are taking clearly diverse approaches with their higher-end gaming consoles.
For now, the public knows more about the PS4 Pro because Sony officially unveiled the console in September. On the other hand, Microsoft has disclosed just enough about the Xbox One Scorpio, which is not the console's final name, for gamers to make presumptions and comparisons between the two powerful devices.
4K Availability
Microsoft has already tried setting its upcoming gaming device apart from its competitors by emphasizing that the Xbox One Scorpio will have a 4K Blu-ray drive. But Sony has discarded this concept on the PS4 Pro, having decided that a physical optical drive is not as important as it was before, which is somehow ironic in view of the fact that Sony has been the reason behind media-playing gaming devices since the PlayStation 2.
"I think us stating a feature that we have in our box that we think is an important selling feature of our box is completely within fair game," Xbox chief Phil Spencer told GameSpot.
Premium Gaming Consoles
It looks like Microsoft has positioned the Xbox One Scorpio as a premium console for hardcore gamers. Spencer has stated that the Xbox One Scorpio will be priced at a premium by the end of 2017.
While Microsoft, nonetheless, has seemingly listened to the gamers' concerns, it should be extremely careful with the Xbox One Scorpio's price point. Because these gaming consoles were intended as affordable desktop alternatives, and with PC prices going down lately, Microsoft might just be cutting its head off the console market.
This is a fact worth considering since Xbox does not have the same customer base as Sony does at this time; with the former losing its favor from a lot of gamers, thanks to its disastrous public relations campaigns for the Xbox One.
Specs
The PlayStation 4 Pro sports an octa-core AMD Jaguar x86-64bit CPU with 4.2 Teraflop graphics processing unit (GPU) while the Xbox Scorpio will most likely have a much powerful GPU of 6 Teraflops. If this happens, it would no doubt crown the Xbox One Scorpio as the most powerful gaming console in its generation.
When it comes to VR and 4K gaming, memory bandwidth is important, and it appears that the Xbox Scorpio will have a 320 Gbps bandwidth as compared to the 218 Gbps of the PS4 Pro. It is also worth noting that the Scorpio's memory bandwidth is similar to Nvidia's high-end GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card for PCs, which uses GDDR5X memory and not the GDDR5.
If this happens, the Scorpio will have an edge as it will be faster than the PS4 Pro that is still stuck on GDDR5 memory.
Price Point
Sony has confirmed that the PS4 Pro will be sold at $399, which is within the same price range as when the standard PS4 first came out. Microsoft has not yet made confirmations or indications as to how much the Xbox One Scorpio will be priced at. But it is highly likely to be similar to the pricing of the PS4 Pro, if not $499 or more.
