Right now, with the Xbox One Scorpio looking to be far superior product offering than the PS4 Pro, looks to be Microsoft’s best chance to reverse their fortunes in the console market, where they have consistently lagged behind Sony since the introduction of the PS4 and the Xbox One.
The Scorpio looks to be a core gamer focused, highly powerful machine- and coupled with Microsoft’s excellent consumer centric policies, such as Xbox Play Anywhere and backwards compatibility, may provide customers enough of a reason to jump ship and switch to Xbox.
When we had a chance to sit down and talk to Jan Klose, Creative Director of Deck 13, the guys who most notably brought us Lords of the Fallen and are currently working on The Other 99, we decided to pose this same question to him: could the Scorpio actually help Microsoft regain marketshare?
“While I’m sure the slightly higher frame-rate and graphical quality offered by Scorpio will be a welcome addition for gamers, the virtual reality solutions coming out of the PlayStation 4 Pro represents a much bigger reason to switch camp,” Klose noted. “Of course, a PS4 Pro is not required to play VR titles on consoles, but the consensus among developers seems to be that it is required to get a comparable experience to PC based solutions.”
He specified what, in his opinion, may cause a shift in marketshare to an appreciable degree.
“Unless a certain platform secures significantly more high-quality, exclusive titles, I don’t think we will see any notable change in market share,” he observed. ” Having said that, I do believe that a high quality VR experience from Sony could see them opening a wider gap between PlayStation and Xbox.”
It sounds like Klose believes that Microsoft would need either a paradigm shifting product like PlayStation VR, or far more exclusives than they have now, to be able to counter the PS4 tide this generation. Whether or not his opinion holds true is something we will learn once the Scorpio finally launches in Holiday 2017.