Opinion: Project Scorpio isn’t a threat to Sony or the PS4 Pro

After Sony's showing of the “lackluster” PlayStation 4 Pro specs, Microsoft and fanboys have begun the trash talk that had been missing since the original PS4 murdered the Xbox One. Project Scorpio has more TFLOPS! Scorpio can play Ultra HD Blu-Rays! Etc. and so on.

Except let's get real for a second: These upgrades are going to be useless to most gamers and the extra performance is expensive.

For starters, I'm going to say most of your typical gamers, the types that don't browse forums, look at media from sites smaller than IGN, or realize that GameStop is trash, cannot tell the difference between 720p and 1080p, nor can they tell the difference between frame rates without jarring drops in performance.

We now have general expectations about where games should be at performance-wise, but looking at speculation threads from earlier this generation revealed that without those general expectations, “hardcore gamers" couldn't accurately identify resolutions or frame rates for games by looking at them.

People still argue about resolution and frame rate, because most of them speak from their ass.

Most console gamers also sit much further away from their displays, than say a PC gamer, meaning their ability to tell the difference between 1080p and 4K on a reasonably sized TV is further hampered by the limitations of human eyesight. Oh, and the fact most gamers also lack a 4K TV.

In April, the NPD claimed that 6 million 4K TVs have been sold. A figure significantly less than the number of console owners out there. That means even if most gamers had the ability to differentiate between 1080p upscaled/native 4K and sat close enough to reliably do so, most of them wouldn't have a TV capable of displaying the higher resolution anyway!

To reap the benefits of higher resolution, gamers have to drop at least $400 on an updated console, and on top of that, the vast majority will need to spend another $400-$1,800 on a new 4K TV or they can settle for more stable, but still capped, frame rates and possibly better lighting in their games. With that in mind, these new consoles aren't looking quite as hot right now.

"Pro/Scorpio games look so good! Look at that crisp 4K resolution!"

However, the price tag and current sales lead play to Sony's favor.

I might be wrong, but Scorpio's extra power (50% MORE TFLOPS BABY WOO) and parts will be reflected in a higher price tag (they haven't revealed a price yet). Unfortunately, that extra power and UHD Blu-Ray reader offers literally nothing over PS Pro to those without a 4K TV. As it stands, the PS4 Pro is the less costly of the two mistakes (I hate the idea of iterative consoles).

The sales advantage is the other, more significant, reason why Sony doesn't have to worry about Scorpio as much as those pounding the war drums would have you believe. Developers will always show preference to the consoles that bring in the most money, just look at last generation for proof: The PS3 was far more powerful than the 360, but the 360 had a sales advantage and was easier to develop on, leading to 360 multiplatform games running better than their sloppily ported PS3 brothers, despite the aforementioned power advantage.

The original PS4 has a 2:1 advantage in potential customers, much larger than the PS3 vs 360 gap. Developers are also forced to make sure their Pro/Scorpio compatible games run on the old hardware too.

What do you think is more likely:

A) Developers will continue to favor performance on Sony consoles because the base console is far more profitable and the upgraded Pro will have a head start in sales by a holiday season.

Or…

B) Developers will equally optimize for each platform to the best of their abilahaHAHAHAHA!

The perfect example of the more powerful console looking and performing the worst.

The key to smart game development is knowing what corners you can cut and creatively doing so to make the most of your resources. That line of thought extends to the development of hardware as well.

Sony looked at the current landscape, then decided on the PS4 Pro specs. They didn't need UHD Blu-Ray because 4K Streaming was more popular, and 4 TFLOPS was enough power: For today's games, even Scorpio's 6 TFLOPS aren't enough for stable performance in native 4K and that extra muscle isn't free. Most people don't even have 4K displays, let alone the ability to tell the difference between native and upscaled 4K resolution.

Sony eschewed more powerful hardware to use a cheaper, more creative solution, that yields impressive results while leaning on that huge sales advantage. On the other hand, Microsoft seems to have blindly pursued powerful, bloated hardware specs that cost more and still fails to live up to a native 4K ready PC.

The GTX 1080 has ~9 TFLOPS, and still has trouble running current games at 4k.

So is Scorpio a threat to Sony? No. Sony has the sales advantage, (likely) the cost advantage, and the fact PS4 fans aren't likely to hop brands now that they've established game libraries that will carry over to the PS4 Pro.