XBO-X? XBox One X garners a curiously muted response.

For months, gaming media sites have been waiting with bated breath for Microsoft to actually debut the XBox Scorpio. The specs were teased months ago, of course, but questions still abounded.

• What would they call it? 
• What would it cost? 
• When would it go on sale? 
• Would any XBox exclusive games debut along with it?

The answers, it turns out, are:

• XBox One X (which Kotaku immediately dubbed the XOX, pronounced "Zox," although XBO-X may end up being the more obvious abbreviation);
• US$499, which is exactly double the XBox One S (henceforth referred to as the XBOne S);
• November 7th, and
• no, not really, since XBOne runs Windows 10 anyway, so everything released for the platform will also be coming to, at the very least, Microsoft's Windows Store on PC.

The one remaining question: Will enough people care about XBO-X to revive it as a viable gaming platform? The answer to which seems to be: Probably not.

As a gaming console, the new XBO-X is very technically impressive, and if Microsoft had launched with the more impressive specs at the start of the current console generation, it might have made a real difference to the way things unfolded. But they didn't, and we're now several years into Gen8, and Steam is the dominant platform in games, with Sony's PS4 as a solid #2, and Nintendo's Switch occupying the "new hotness" niche nicely. Considering that the average consumer only buys one gaming platform each generation, it's pretty fair to say that gamers have all picked their horses for this race, already, with only the Nintendo fans getting a changes to switch to a better horse mid-race.

So, XBO-X doesn't have the same sales job to do that XBone did; it doesn't just have to be the best console, starting out on an equal footing with all the other consoles, and with consumers having yet to make up their minds. It has to change peoples' minds, convincing them to buy a 2nd console at the highest console price point at a time with Steam and PS4 are dominant, with Switch ascendant, and XBO-X not even available until November. Oh, and everything it can do, your PC can also do, without costing you anything extra.

Everything, that is, except for 4K gaming, which may be why Microsoft harped on it so much, apparently oblivious to the fact that basically nobody has 4K TVs. 4K is not a thing, people; 4K gaming isn't going to become a thing, anytime soon. Seriously, VR has a better chance of becoming a thing than 4K does, and VR's chances suck.

The new XBO-X is a decent-enough, $499, budget-to-midrange gaming PC that sits in your living room and runs Windows 10. If that's what you're in the market for, then the XBO-X is a decent-enough option, and the end of Moore's Law means that it will continue to be a decent-enough option for years, so Microsoft will eventually sell enough of them to be able to declare XBO-X to be a success. But I don't see it changing any PlayStation owners' minds; if you've already picked a different horse for this race, there's nothing here that can justify switching now. And if you already own a better-than-average gaming PC, there's really nothing here for you, either.

Meanwhile, big game publishers like Square Enix are dropping the XBox logo from their new releases, having apparently decided that the XBox brand isn't relevant to the current gaming marketplace anymore. And did I mention that XBO-X isn't available until November?

It was a pretty slick presentation, I'll give Microsoft that much, but it's several years too late, and this gaming generation has already passed XBox by. People have been asking for months if "Scorpio" could turn things around for XBox, but the big assumption underlying that question was that the market would stand still until Microsoft could releasing the thing. But the market hasn't stood still for them; Nintendo have successfully cast the Switch as Gen8's console comeback kid, and Microsoft have just been too slow getting XBO-X out the door. Time will tell, of course, but I have the feeling that XBO-X is just a little too little, and a little too late.

Sorry, Microsoft. It was almost good enough, and almost soon enough, but now? It's just not enough. And I doubt you'll get a 3rd chance to make this 1st impression, either.

XBox Scorpio's specs revealed! Do you give a shit?

XBox One is getting clobbered in this round of the console wars. Actually, all of the consoles are kinda getting beat by Steam, which currently boats 125+ million users who remain users even if they upgrade to new hardware, which handily beats even Sony's (2nd place) PlayStation 4. But XB One never really did recover from a terrible launch event in which Microsoft talked about nothing but TV and DRM, and was only selling half as well as PS4 when Microsoft announced that they wouldn't be announcing their console's sales numbers anymore. Ouch.

The Slim version sold slightly better, but Microsoft's hopes for maintaining a presence in the living have pretty clearly been pinned on their new Scorpio console for a while now. We've been hearing for months about how Scorpio was going to be the most powerful console ever made, but details have been sparse, and genuine hype has been hard for Microsoft to maintain. Apparently they're aware of that problem, though, so they're doing everything they can to make as big a splash as possible when Scorpio is actually rolled out, which should be any day now.

Which brings us to those specs.

The specs themselves look impressive enough... for a console. And apparently performance is also pretty good... for a console. But are the specs impressive enough, and is the performance good enough, so lure gamers away from their PS4's and Steam accounts, and back to an XBox environment which Microsoft has very strongly tied to Windows 10?

Probably not, at least according to Gizmodo:

We finally know the specs for Microsoft’s supercharged Xbox One: the Project Scorpio console. They’re impressive. The GPU has nearly four times as many compute units as the original Xbox One and the memory on the console will be 108GB/s faster than the memory in both the Xbox One S and Scorpio’s primary challenger, the PS4 Pro. On paper this thing reads like lightning.

In practice it means jack shit.

As proven in many previous console wars, specs alone aren’t enough to win the race. A system needs a lot more if it wants to unseat a challenger. According to Superdata there are twice as many PS4 consoles in the wild as Xbox One machines. A report earlier this year suggest that Sony has sold 55 million units of its next-gen console to Microsoft’s 26 million unit sales. That’s not just a win from a sales perspective. It makes it appealing for prospective console owners too. If they’re investing in a console for Overwatch or Destiny 2 or any of the other multiplayer games available (or soon to be available), then they’ll have twice as large a base of players to compete with on a PS4. Sony is winning, and it’s not just because it got its souped up console to market nearly a full year before Microsoft.

[...] This highlights Microsoft’s fundamental console problem. The company knows how to make its product shine. Beating the PS4 Pro to market with a console that doubles as a UHD Blu-ray player was smart. And announcing the specs for its new souped up challenger two months before it’s officially revealed at E3 is a great way to build hype. But all that polish on the Xbox One, One S, and Scorpio can’t cover up the console’s biggest problem—games. [...] Microsoft’s exclusive Halo and Gears of War franchises are a good draw, but they lack the allure of Sony-only blockbusters.

Sony has Naughty Dog’s excellent Uncharted 4, and the gorgeous Last of Us remake (as well as the upcoming sequel). Those aren’t just critically-acclaimed games for this console generation—they’re considered outright masterpieces. The same might be said of February’s Horizon: Zero Dawn or last year’s Bloodborne.

[...] So the great specs Microsoft announced earlier this morning? Those aren’t going to be enough to help it scramble back to the top of the console heap. But its certainly a start. Which is more than Microsoft could say yesterday.

Yes, four years after launching the XBox One, Microsoft are finally starting to actually run in the current race for console domination. Sony, meanwhile, has already lapped them, killed off Nintendo's offering the process, and is winning the sales war on VR as well (something else that Gizmodo mentions), all while making it look easy.

I have to agree with Gizmodo's take on today's Scorpio spec reveal; they're very shiny specs, but it's a little late in this race for Microsoft to be leaning on specs alone. Especially not if you're a PC gamer... which, statistically, most gamers are (125+ million Steam users, 55+ million PS4 owners... do the maths).

But don't take my word for that. From PC Gamer:

How does all of this compare to our PC platform? It's a bit apples to oranges, since we have the ability to customize all of our components. The best approximation of the performance offered by Scorpio is our budget PC build, which includes a Core i3-7100, 8GB RAM, and an RX 480 8GB graphics card. It also has a larger case, PSU, and a 500GB SSD, and it costs around $700.

[...] Put another way, the current Xbox One has hardware that looks positively pathetic in many areas. Sure, it has eight CPU cores, but each CPU is about one third the performance of a single i3 core. Eight of them working together might, maybe, match a Core i3 in a few specific workloads. The graphics meanwhile is like an HD 7770, a chip that came out in early 2012 and which would struggle with modern games.

[...] Now triple the performance of the Xbox One, and you can see how this might challenge a desktop PC for gaming prowess. It doesn't have the raw power a PC has, but it makes better use of its power.

[...] Today's top-end PC GPUs like the GTX 1080 are still much better suited to 4K gaming at high and ultra settings, and CPUs like AMD's Ryzen and Intel's Kaby Lake are much newer, more efficient architectures. If Scorpio ends up a capable 4K 60 fps gaming machine, that should only mean good things for PC gaming: we should expect all the ports from Microsoft's console to meet that standard on PC, too.

So, it's a budget PC for a budget price, meant to compete with PCs, released at a time when PC sales have been in decline for years, and that lives in your living room. You can't upgrade it, which is a bit of a bummer but not as big a deal as it would have been while Moore's Law was still driving PC upgrade cycles. It only runs Windows 10, but most PC gamers seem to be OK with that, anyway (alas). But... if your gaming PC pre-dates the Obama administration, and you're in the mood for a budget PC that will probably be good enough for your gaming needs for years to come, and have a nice, big TV to connect it to, then I guess Scorpio could be decent value. It will probably sell a few million units this year.

It's not game-changing, though, and I don't think that Sony need to be worried. Kudos to Microsoft for not giving up, but I doubt that this is going to move the market in any major way.

XBox Scorpio is unlikely to shift the balance of the console market

Microsoft have been pretending for a while now that their soon-to-be-released new console, code-named Scorpio, will once again make XBox a player in this console generation, even as Phil Spencer talks openly about the entire concept of console generations being outdated. But the reality is that Microsoft's XBox division stumbled badly coming out of the gate for this leg of the console race, and it simply may be too late for them to recover.

From GamingBolt:

Yesterday, we reported on Michael Pachter’s assessment that Sony will not release a new bit of hardware to counter the more powerful Xbox Scorpio. At the time, we agreed with what he had to say- we noted that given Sony’s massive lead, as well as the momentum and inertia that they have on their side, they are guaranteed to stay ahead of Xbox no matter what, and their best course of action was to, well, stay the course.

This is something glaringly obvious to everyone and everybody- if the Scorpio is intended to compete against the PS4, it is going up against a system with a four year head start (or around 1 if you count the PS4 Pro), and an install base likely to be north of 65 million by the time the Scorpio does launch. People this generation associate PS4 as the default console- much like the Xbox 360 the generation before that. Even if the Scorpio ends up being more powerful, it is unlikely to unseat the PS4 from the throne that it occupies in the mainstream gamer’s consciousness- precedence for this phenomenon exists with the original Xbox and PS2.

Not only are the stark realities of the console market working against them, so are the technical realities of having multiple consoles on the market at the same time, with the same brand on them, but with different specs and capabilities. The PS4 Pro has experienced all sorts of technical headaches, with many games actually running worse on the more powerful PS4 console, and only Horizon: Zero Dawn, so far, really showing off the full capabilities of the new hardware.

These issues are old hat to PC developers who have long had to cope with, and program for, the wide range of hardware on which users might be trying to play their games, but for console developers, this is new, tricky, and expensive ground. This was one of the advantages of consoles as a platform, remember: the hardware was always a known, stable quantity, helping to keep development costs down. That advantage is now gone for PS4, and with Scorpio, XBox is about to follow suit.

Of course, XBoxes just flat-out run Windows 10 now, so developers have the option to just stop making games for the XBox per se, and instead make UWP games. That would seem to be part of Microsoft's strategy, here, but it would also, in and of itself, mean that the Scorpio has failed to regain XBox's influence in the console space. It also doesn't solve the problem of developers with nothing but console expertise suddenly needing to develop a significantly expanded skill set to cope with the added complexity of PC game development... and a way of coping with the extra costs involved.

Also, there's the problem of Scorpio not even being out yet, with the first games that will truly showcase its power being at least a year away, if not more. Again, nothing new for a new console... except that new consoles don't normally launch several years into a new console generation, with the market leader having already overcome these new-console growing pains. Nintendo's Switch, incidentally, will face this same problem.

Scorpio may not be 90 FPS VR capable, after all

Either that, or VR just isn't the selling point that it seemed to be, a year ago.

From TweakTown:

One of the main selling points of Microsoft's new high-end Project Scorpio--besides delivering "the highest res at the best frame rates without no compromises"--was its virtual reality capabilities; Microsoft was keen on pushing a higher-end VR experience that would eclipse what Sony offers with its PS4-powered PlayStation VR headset. Xbox General Manager of Game Publishing Shannon Loftis has said that Project Scorpio can deliver high-fidelity VR at 90 FPS.

But has this changed? Has Microsoft shifted gears away from premium VR gaming with its new console? All mention of 'high fidelity VR' has been erased from Project Scorpio's website. This is particularly interesting timing because Microsoft has recently hired many of the industry's top tech-makers like ASUS, Acer, Dell, Lenovo and HP to create Windows 10 powered VR headsets. I postulated that this move would help foster Project Scorpio's own ambitious VR plans, but it appears that instead of pushing things forward, these OEMs might have encountered a snag in the progress, thus affecting the console's VR-ready status. 

One thing that's also different is that Microsoft no longer claims that Project Scorpio is the "first and only console to enable true 4K gaming." This is likely at the behest of its own community and Sony fans, especially considering the PS4 Pro can deliver upscaled 4K gaming as well as VR.

I doubt this development will affect Scorpio's reception much, one way or the other, but it is interesting. It either points to (a) VR having a much higher cost in graphical processing power that Microsoft expected, or to (b) VR being significantly less attractive as a selling point that Microsoft expected, back when Scorpio was first announced. Both of these may say more about the problems facing VR, than about the problems facing MS's new XBox model as they attempt to claw their way back into competition for the current "console" generation.

Microsoft will try again to unify Windows 10 & XBox gaming

From neowin:

For years now, Microsoft has been diligently working on a strategy to converge its gaming ecosystems on Xbox and Windows. Though we’ve seen bits and pieces of these efforts show up, it won’t be until the launch of Xbox Scorpio next year, when the company’s vision fully comes to life.

The company’s struggles and strategy to bring together Xbox and Windows gaming are bundled together in a single strand, codenamed Project Helix. Originally publicized by Kotaku earlier this year, Project Helix involves creating one platform, that allows easy access and performant tools for developers to craft games, while giving varied choices and mobility to the player base to move around in the ecosystem.

If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because you might be thinking of the Universal Windows Platform (UWP). That’s the runtime that Microsoft developed for all of its Windows ecosystems, which has largely the same mission statement as Project Helix. And that’s by no means an accident, seeing as the UWP is an integral part of the company’s gaming ambitions.

Yes, it looks like Helix = UWP 2.0. The fact that UWP already needs a 2.0 should tell you just how badly it's failing. So far, UWP is Games for Windows Live all over again; Microsoft seems to be banking on Helix, and the Scorpio console that will be the de facto standard for XBox going forward, to turn this trend around, but I have my doubts.

Or, as neowin put it:

The unified ecosystem will all be based around the UWP platform and run through the Windows Store, though XDK will still be highly important. As this comes to pass, Microsoft will finally have a unified, integrated ecosystem, capable of sustaining its users across all platforms.

Whether this succeeds in any meaningful way in the market remains to be seen. Steam is still the dominant platform on PC, and for good reason. Microsoft’s recent missteps with the launch of the latest Call of Duty as a Universal app, have highlighted the nascent platform’s weakness. If users continue to ignore the Windows Store and Microsoft fails to entice them, Project Helix may be little more than an technical achievement. But you don’t get any Gs for trying.

With Steam now working hard to improve their service, and thus retain their customers' trust and loyalty, Microsoft's hill just got tougher to climb, and the steady drip of UWP failures like CoD will only make that harder. The fact that Microsoft is doubling down on a strategy that isn't working now is probably a solid sign of them not having a plan B, either.

Microsoft keep trying to "integrate" everything inside of their walled garden, with them as gatekeepers and sole arbiters of what will (and won't) be allowed on users' PCs, but it's becoming increasingly clear that PC users mostly don't want that, just like they didn't want it in Windows 8. Unless Microsoft stop trying to be Apple, and stop trying to make Windows 10 into iOS, they're going to continue to struggle with this.

Weird non-hype for Microsoft's next event

From ars technica:

Microsoft has confirmed when its anticipated New York City event is going to take place—on October 26 at 10am Eastern, the company is going to deliver some kind of announcement.

It appears this may not be the event we were expecting or hoping for. The invitation puts the focus on Windows 10—it shows a very literal picture of a window—and we're hearing from sources familiar with the company's plans that the focus will be Windows 10 and the next evolutions of the operating system. We'll likely learn what Microsoft is bringing to both OEM hardware and to the HoloLens and Xbox One, but we do not anticipate a wide array of new hardware.

As such, anyone hoping to see the next iteration of the Surface Pro, Surface Book, or Band later this month is probably going to be disappointed. We expect it's still too early to see more of Project Scorpio, the next generation Xbox that will be released next year. Anyone hoping to see a Surface Phone is also going to be disappointed (not just at this event, but in general).

OK, I know that I'm normally really, really antagonistic when media outlets hype basically information-free stories that amount to regurgitated PR copy, but the tone of this is just so weirdly apathetic that I have to wonder if that attitude isn't starting to spread, like a virus of some kind.

I mean, "the company is going to deliver some kind of announcement?" Or, "Anyone hoping to see a Surface Phone is also going to be disappointed (not just at this event, but in general)?" Ouch.

Microsoft's heavy-handed approach to forcing Windows 10 on users, with all of its privacy issues and technical problems, would appear to have resulted in enough negative PR to basically kill interest in anything related to the OS itself. If they have new hardware to show? Surface Pro, Surface Book, Surface Phone, or new XBox? Watch the hype fly off the chain. But if they want to talk about their flagship product, on which the company's entire future is riding? Yawn. 

Microsoft have earned every bit of this apathy, and then some, but it's still weird (and weirdly satisfying) to see it actually starting to happen. I guess we'll have to wait until Oct. 26th to learn if they have anything like a plan to start earning back the trust, goodwill, and interest of the customers that they've clearly alienated. 

Your move, Microsoft.

XBox Boss says that gaming is now "beyond generations"

Phil Spencer's team is losing this console generation badly, so I can see why he'd have a vested interest in getting people to break out of their pre-set thinking about console gaming cycles, but I was still a little surprised when he came straight out with the fact that Scorpio marked the beginning of the end for console generations in gaming.

From GamingBolt:

“Project Scorpio will be the next addition to the Xbox One family and it ultimately is the next step in delivering our vision for the future of gaming beyond generations,” Spencer said.

[...]

"Project Scorpio is a serious inflection point for team Xbox and we are announcing Project Scorpio today to gives our developers and partners to take advantage of that ability now in order to realize their visions for the future and deliver even more great games for you. Today marks the beginning of gaming beyond generations. A future full of choice. All future where can all play without boundaries.”

It’s a bold and ambitious vision, and a dramatic change from how console gaming has been so far.

It's a vision in which there essentially isn't a next console generation, so I guess bold is as good as way as any to describe it. I don't know if it's ambitious, though, so much as realistic. After all, some of us have been talking about this being the last console generation for some time, now.

That's right. I called it. Booyah.