Just yesterday we posted official confirmation by Andrew House (Sony Interactive Entertainment's President and Global CEO) that PlayStation 4 Pro games will be mostly upscaled to 4K, probably via checkerboard rendering, rather than be rendered natively at 4K resolution.
In an interview published by USA Today, Microsoft Studios' Publishing General Manager Shannon Loftis revealed that this won't be the case for the upcoming Xbox One Scorpio.
Any games we're making that we're launching in the Scorpio time frame, we're making sure they can natively render at 4K.
Microsoft definitely jumped the gun with the Scorpio announcement back at E3 2016, one year and a half before the projected Holiday 2017 release date of the new console. That said, we do already know that Microsoft is targeting 6 teraflops of computing power (PlayStation 4 Pro has about 4.2) thanks to a Polaris GPU, an eight cores CPU and 320GB/s of memory bandwidth.
The goal is to allow proper 4K gaming as well as a premium VR experience (no VR device has been confirmed so far for Scorpio, but the Oculus Rift is a very likely candidate). After Sony announced the technical specifications of PlayStation 4 Pro at New York City's PlayStation Meeting, Xbox Senior Director of Product Management & Planning Albert Penello promptly stated that the difference in favor of Scorpio will be obvious and Microsoft will have the most powerful box next year.
The big question is the price. If Microsoft can set a $399 price tag, then Scorpio could be the obvious choice for undecided gamers - though admittedly in a year Sony could cut the price of PlayStation 4 Pro and make it cheaper. Still, for those console gamers who're willing to wait the next Holiday season the Xbox One "Scorpio" will deliver the most powerful hardware and games rendered at native 4K.
About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief. In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech's gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews. Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications. His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.
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