Windows Central Podcast 44: Scorpio Detailed!

What?

All apple has in that space is AppleTV. People like to claim that XB1 is a "failure," but AppleTV has been a real failure. It has sold less over the entire lifespan, all versions, than XB1 sold. People complain about consoles being inferior to PC for games, and yet the experience for games does not go much beyond Crossy Road. Don't be confused and think that casual games on a phone that people can play on the bus or during a lunch break with people will want to sit down in front of their TV and play on their TV. People play AppleTV quality games on their phone while watching TV. And I thought it was all about app count, something that AppleTV is laging far behind even the XB1.

Don't mistake gaming for the only activity viable for the livingroom. It should be refrased to "beating the competition to the home". We are talking smarthomes now, TV's, speakers, doors, windows, mirrors, diswashers, fridges, lighting, heating, ventilation, you name it, just about everything will be controlled by software soon. And he who controls mobile, has a big foot inside the door!

Actually, there was an interview I saw about how Sony is the reason why Bill Gates let the XBOX even exist. He hated it didnt run Windows. Hated most things about it and one senior exec said, "What about Sony and the living room." Bill thought about it for a bit and then said basically we will do whatever you need.  Sony in the living room has always been a huge threat to Microsoft. 

Funny how his wish came true.

Tom Westrick dis you know that at one point in time Apple made a console called the Apple pippin, It failed.

Okay, and? Hardly has anything to do with today's market.    Also, there's this thing called the "Reply" button. 

Because Apple failed decades ago, it means that they are guaranteed a success now? Apple is having problems shipping new versions of their existing products. They think that they can sit around and do nothing, and customers will flock to their products and pay a premium for outdated tech. Just recently they said that customer feedback is forcing them back to the drawing board for one of their products, the Mac Pro. It took them 3.5 years to hear and comprehend the complaints? And then they say that it will take at least a year for them to respond with actual product? And the same has happened with the Mac.  21 years after Pippen, according to you, they are only now starting to see their failures and it means that they will win with some magical, unreleased product? iPad sales have been shrinking since the first year it was released. iPhone sales recovered slightly in the last version. Mac sales have been shrinking over the past few years because they are out of date and using components that are a couple gens behind. You have not made your argument of how they are guaranteed to be a success, and a 21 year old product is not proof of their guaranteed success.

You see a lot in four decades.

But you can't see the reply button. 

The reply button is too short sided to see when looking over decades ;). 

Microsoft is AWFUL at communicating.

They talk about RS3 before the Creators Update is released. They give information about Scorpio a year and a half before it is available, they allow the press access to let people know about 7+ months before it is released. Yeah, they are awful. Then there is that fruity company that is well known for being secretive about everything until a few days before it is released. And they are praised for not communicating, for building up suspense, for creating an entire industry based upon speculation.

Sure, MS has communicated a lot of things, but not concerning the area that really matters. That fruity company and MS are in completely different situations. Mobile is the dominant computing platform at the moment and will be so for the forseable future, and everybody knows that fruity company is completely committed to that. So even though they may not reveal much info between each product release, everyone knows they'll at least be working on two new phones and any other new device they release may, or may not, open up a new market. MS is stuck on the old computing platform which has been in decline for the past 10 years and will keep on declining for the forseable future, although they made an attempt to enter the smartphone/mobile-computing market, just as they seemed to have all the pieces in place to actually have genuinely attractive and competing platform (Onecore, UWP, continuum, play-anywhere), MS decided to withdraw from the market. Now without any communication about it's future plan's it looks like MS is stikking it's head into the ground and hoping that the problem will go away. They need to adress the mobile computing situation or else Windows as a whole will be a niche market in 5-10 years time. That fruity company actually had a similar problem concerning their OSX devices (although on a much smaller scale, since the problem is the other way around for them), users felt the company was ignoring them as they seemed to only be interested in developing iOS devices. But at least that fruity company came forth and apolagized to their customers and promised renewed efforts for their Mac series of devices. The difference is that fruity company can live fine without OSX, iOS can and will most likely replace it completely in the future. MS (or at least Windows) cannot survive without a strong mobile presence. So MS needs to start assuring the developers and customers that they have a future plan, otherwise even more developers will start jumping ship and we risk seeing the dramatic decline for Windows in general as we have seen for Windows Phone/Mobile lately.  

Comprehensive reply.

I really want to know Microsofts plans for windows 10.. I think the second they make it more appealing for developers, more people will flock to them.. And not just going after enterprise. We want a consumer phone that will look nice feel nice and work consistently.. I'm tired of being made fun of by apple and android users..

Been reading some great pieces by some really knowledgeable PC gamers. And to build a PC that matches Scorpios capability they are saying you need to spend over $1000. Putting an RX480, in a PC isn't going to match anywhere near the custom design of Scorpio. Plus optimization is shocking on PC games. Even a geforce 1070 gtx has a slower memory bus and memory than what Scorpio is pushing. Then there's the custom Scorpio CPU. With it's command Processor and unique ways the CPU has less ops to deal with. It is impossible to build a PC that matches it for under $1000.

Yes, but that's nothing new, PC's have never been able to match concoles on computing at the same price (at the time of the consoles release date). If you integrate all your components on one board, you are going to save a lot on materials, manufacturing cost and even reduce som latencies. Furthermore since developers are making the software for one hardware setup, it's much easier to optimize the software. The strength of the PC platform is that you can have something a lot more powerful if you are willing to spend the extra money, and you have the ability to swap it's parts whenever something powerful is released. Simply swapping the graphics card after 3 or 4 years can keep your PC's computing power ahead of consoles for two full genrations. So you could compare the price of the initial PC and upgrade with the price of two consoles. And off course you can use a PC for things other than gaming. My point is that there is no black and white answer for wether one platform is better than the other. If you are a caual gamer who only plays half a dozen titles a year, and don't need a PC for other stuff your cheapest option would probably be a console. If you buy a lot of games a year (or if you need a PC anyway for productive stuff), it's probably cheaper to go for a PC since console games on average are about 20$ more expensive than the PC version.  

That may used to be true. But not anymore. If as a PC gamer every 3 years you have to upgrade your PC by about £1000 to match the 3 yearly cycle of new Xboxs then it becomes far cheaper and more sensible to just upgrade to a new Xbox every 3 years for £399-499. MS have changed the game here. With a console so meticulously crafted with no bottlenecks that its punching way way way above it's price range in terms of a PC getting the same result. And if the rumour is true then Scorpio may be able to play and access PC titles from the Windows 10 store as well and use mouse and keyboard. In 3 years Xbox has gone from 68mb bandwidth and 1.2tf to 326mb/bandwidth and 6TF. In 2020 when Scorpio 2 hits not a single PC built today will match it. In 2020 the next Scorpio will likely have around 12tf, more bandwidth and priced at $399-$499. Plus all the custom game design choices in the console itself. PC for games are increasingly becoming harder to optimize and much less return for powerful hardware.

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Microsoft needs to make it easier for Developers to make UWP apps that look good. I am a .Net dev + a indie game dev... UWP is great... however...
Compare UWP to Winforms (the old 32bit app stuff), making a menu system in Winforms is simple, you drag a menu onto your form and you have a menu bar, you type into the prompted space and you have a button... it is easy. but menus and buttons react how you expect. Take UWP... you need to custom make the Hamburger menu yourself, which is why all the UWP app's menus never feel consistant... even amongst Microsoft's own apps. They need to work hard to give developers the ability to get into the meat of the app (the actual reason they are making the app) rather than having to worry or bother with the UI. I agree that UI and UX is an important part of apps and should be completely customisable... but please for the love of all things .Net... give us some standard controls to use. Really hoping they announce more UWP controls at Build17 :) As for developing for Multiplatform... as a indie dev using Unity... its fairly easy. Unity exports the game as a UWP project that you compile using VS2015 or later. I recently gave up on Android... yes, i gave up... I had the OnePlus 3 which recieved the Nouget update and i didnt like it... i tried many launchers but none were as good as the Windows Mobile start screen. I also love that my PC, xbox and phone all run the same windows build, I hope Microsoft succeeds in the mobile market, I really dont want to suffer android or iOS again...  

Interesting. If that's accurate no wonder there are always a niggling sense of incompleteness in the Windows UWP design language. Hope they can fix it before build.

It will only be fixed when they add menu controls to standardise the look and feel of the hamburger menu and other standard controls. the menu is my biggest gripe. Getting one that looks like the one present in the News app takes sooo much effort for something that should simply melt into the background. Give me a RootHamburger control + HamburgerMenuButtons and i'll develop professional looking apps for the Windows Store to run on PC,xbox and phone. I hope Build17 does present us with standard controls to help uniform the look and feel of the apps, especially with Project Neon showing signs in the creators update.

I started watching this vidcast specifically for the Scorpio slant. Jex Corden said Playstation so many times it became a distraction for me. I understand the need for a bit of comparison but hey, it was supposed to be a Scorpio article. I gave up watching. Looking at the cast members  from left to right, Daniel, Jez and Zac I'm thinking professional, sloth and geek. Daniel, future CNN tech journalist. I hope you earn lots of money someday. Jez match your journalist skills with a better presentation.  Improve picture clarity, get some flesh tone in there and 'look at the camera'. Zac, you can use a bit more professional look. Just because your young and smart doesn't mean that you have to look like a kid. Make yourself look a little older and amp up the flesh tone a bit too.

9/10 would lol again

Great podcast again I look forward to these every week, nice to see Jez in on the action as an xbox gamer I value his opinions, best source for all things Windows!