Microsoft has been talking a lot about Project Scorpio ever since the console was officially announced at E3 2016. It turned out to be the biggest announcement of the show, especially seeing as Microsoft decided to focus on the 4K mantra and the 6-teraflops of GPU power.
With such a powerful system, we expect it to be better than the PlayStation 4 Pro, having only 4.2-teraflops of GPU power. The Sony system, from what we have seen so far, is capable of running video games at 4K, but not with graphically demanding titles.
We expect small indie games to have little problem hitting the 4K ballpark, while higher end games to take advantage of the Checkerboard technique to upscale games to 4K.
It would be unfair to expect a lot from the PlayStation 4 Pro seeing as the system only costs $399, the same launch price as the original PlayStation 4.
As for Project Scorpio — the next Xbox, many are expecting true 4K games from this console, and that's because it's the promise Microsoft had made. However, it should be noted that Microsoft clearly stated that all games from its own studios will be in 4K, so we take this as saying third-party titles might not run at true 4K at the end of the day.
Let's Talk About Price
The known hardware specifications of Project Scorpio right now, is the 6-teraflop of GPU power, 320GB/s of bandwidth, eight CPU cores, and a 12 GB of GDDR5 RAM. That's a huge update over the Xbox One S and the PlayStation 4 Pro, so it would be a bit off to believe this console would cost the same as the $299 Xbox One S, or even the cost of the new Sony system.
If we follow what Phil Spencer had to say, the man who is the head of the Xbox team, then it's likely easy to tell Project Scorpio won't be super cheap. He calls it a premium console for high-end gamers, which could mean the console is not targeting all Xbox One owners, but just those who require better performance.
From everything Spencer had to say, we'd like to go on a limb and say Project Scorpio might very well cost $499 when it launches in 2017. Six-teraflops of GPU power, eight core CPU and rumored 12GB of GDDR5 RAM doesn't come cheap. Yes, Microsoft has an entire year to find ways to keep costs down, but at this point, Xbox One owners and those still on the fence should keep an eye out for the $499 price tag.
Would A $499 Price Be An Issue?
We don't see why it would, to be honest. If we look at the Xbox One when it launched, it mainly lost out to the PlayStation 4 due to its higher price and weaker performance. Scorpio will have the performance to back up the high price, and if Microsoft can deliver games that look substantially better than what PlayStation 4 Pro has to offer, then gamers will flock.
