If there is one product people will be looking forward to in E3 2017, it would be Microsoft's Project Scorpio. A press invite was sent out by the company a day ahead of E3 2017.
An invite was tweeted out by the company to its annual E3 media briefing on June 11, Sunday, before E3. The Tweet features a picture of the Project Scorpio's CPU/GPU combo that is supposedly 4K-capable.
Brace for big news.#XboxE3 briefing will air Sunday, June 11 at 2 PM PT. pic.twitter.com/EWilMOb47s
— Xbox (@Xbox) February 15, 2017
Project Scorpio was teased in last year's E3 alongside the introduction of the company's Xbox One S. Xbox One S rejuvenated the Xbox brand for its improved design as well as the inclusion of having a 4K Blu-ray drive, according to Ars Technica.
Microsoft touts that Project Scorpio will be the most powerful console ever built. Partially leaked specs of the unit also being called the Xbox Scorpio, have pundits agree that Microsoft might be right. The question is can it deliver?
Apparently, Project Scorpio will not rely on a similar method the PS4 Pro does to render 4K resolutions by "checkerboarding," a process that achieves 4K appearance without needing so much graphical power. Without releasing too much about the specifics of Project Scorpio, Microsoft naturally claims it will be very powerful, reportedly five times more powerful than the Xbox One.
However, PC enthusiasts might not be so impressed considering NVIDIA is reportedly coming out with its GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card in March that boasts of a whopping nine teraflops, as compared to Project Scorpio's six teraflops of graphical power.
This can be construed as a possible motive for Microsoft's attempt at expediency in finally unveiling Project Scorpio. Microsoft cannot afford the wait before high-end PC's supporting better technologies to get further ahead before its eventual release.
Six Teraflops is powerful, though it might not be enough to process content at native 4K. For this, Microsoft will employ a couple of effects, as suggested in its whitepaper, processes called 'half-resolution' and 'sparse rendering.'
Half resolution employs a technique that runs effects at a lower resolution and then upscaled to its full resolution at render. Sparse rendering, on the other hand, is a process similar to 'checkerboarding' employed by the PS4 Pro that upscales games to 4K indistinguishable from the native resolution.
The advantage Project Scorpio has is that, like the Xbox One, it runs Windows. Developing games for both platforms would be easier for developers with this setup.
According to Trusted Reviews, Microsoft announced that a full reveal is to be expected about Project Scorpio aka Xbox Scorpio at E3 2017. Details are regarding the console is expected and, probably price points will come up, as well as, a definite release date.
