If you had any concerns that Microsoft’s upcoming contender to the throne of most powerful console – Project Scorpio – will launch with a price-point similar to that of a high-spec PC, you shouldn’t – Microsoft says it intends for the upgraded, 4K-enabled Xbox One to have a price that’s competitive with its own market when it launches next year.
Speaking to AusGamers (via VideoGamer) Xbox boss Phil Spencer said that the Scorpio will have a “console price point,” adding that “when you talk to me about Scorpio, the term I use about the architecture isn’t the six teraflops which is obviously what we’ve announced, it’s balance.”
Elaborating, Spencer says that “really what it is, is you want a platform that is balanced between memory bandwidth, GPU power, you know, your ability to move memory and [an] amount of memory around in many ways is more inhibiting to the performance of your game than absolute teraflops on any one of the individual pieces, and when we designed Scorpio we really thought about this balanced rig that could come together at a price-point.”
The crux of the Scorpio’s appeal then, isn’t in directly competing with high-end PCs, but rather, to offer a console alternative for those who want a more powerful gaming device, but have no interest in spending huge amounts of money on a PC.
Assuming Microsoft sticks to its original plan of releasing Project Scorpio towards the tail end of 2017, it could well be on shop shelves this time next year, albeit with a different name. How well it will perform financially remains to be seen, but if it bolsters hardware sales as dramatically as the PS4 Pro seems to have done for Sony, expect it to do rather well.
