In the grand chess game of retail strategy many have wondered if Sony was
waiting for their rival Microsoft to tip their hand when they were the
first to reveal the specs of their upcoming Scorpio system.
With numerous rumors that the Playstation Neo would be in stores in 2016
many fans and media wondered why Sony was so quiet on the subject as
should it debut in 2016, there is not much time for consumers to plan for
what is likely a console priced system to say nothing of the supply and
demand issues over the Holiday Shopping Season.
As we documented prior, Sony has eschewed Gamescom and PAX West
announcements and now seems set to reveal more news during their September
7th conference. This is great news to eager fans who have speculated that
Sony was simply waiting to hear what Microsoft had planned so they can
make adjustments to their system to ensure it remains at a competitive
advantage.
Sony has to not only contend with The Scorpio but also the looming
Nintendo NX, which is set to debut in March of 2017. While many would not
consider the NX to be a threat to Sony after the underperformance of the
Wii U, a new system will generate attention and headlines even if sales
are not there and nobody wants to see their new product lost in the
shuffle.
One thing is for sure, is that with the pending launch of the Playstation
VR, Sony is looking to press down the gas hard on the competition and
leaving them scrambling to catch up.
The Scorpio is an impressive unit but Microsoft will have to continue to
offer high quality exclusive titles for gamers.
For me the biggest issue
has been that most of their exclusives that have interested me are also
available on PC so I did not have incentive to get a console version of a
game as I could enjoy it on PC with greater graphics and performance.
A bit over a year ago I wrote that 4K gaming could be the new battlefield
and I was told I was an idiot and that this tech is years away.
Well it seems that the future is now and that both Sony and Microsoft as well as PC’s with the release of the 1060, 1070, and 1080 NVIDIA cards by EVGA and
other top manufacturers are doing all they can to make sure the 4K future
arrives sooner rather than later.
Another article tried to do a PC rig comparison using the rumoured Neo graphics core (think it was the rx480), and maxing out the rest of the PC specs to remove all other bottlenecks.
The results were that the 480, clocked at supposed Neo level (think the core was bout 900mhz), has simply no ability to run 4k almost at all.
Sony was suggesting they’ll be depending on a series of upscaling techniques to make their games look 4k.
Sounds like to me if things don’t change , Neo and maybe Scorpio will be reltively minor upgrades to their gaming. As with the old graphics factor, the further we go, the less visual gain we get for linear performance increases
Don’t know if anyone has given it a thought, but what if Sony plans for the NEO to be the all encompassing system to play games on, VR is a given, 4K is a given…now how about a built-in PS3 chipset that will allow universal backwards compatibility with PS3 games? In one fell swoop, Sony can cover all the bases while bringing a nice shiny new piece of hardware to market; making Project Scorpio irrelevant after a year on the market by then releasing the PS5. Something to ponder.
It is hard to say. We can get a 4K TV for about 500 now and we have seen some nice ones at CES as well. The issue is will the developers make games that really take advantage of 4K and will the hardware support it. I do not want to have to scrimp in other areas of the game to get to 4K. Also I do not want to see the stuff you get with some Xbox One games where it is not 1080 but 700+