The Xbox One Scorpio is touted to be the most powerful console ever made, when it launches next year. It will have a monstrous 6 TFLOPs GPU, better CPU and memory, and… actually, that’s all that we really know about it. We don’t know much about any other specs on the machine, and though Microsoft talk about the console a lot, we are left in the dark about the specifics regarding it.

That was one of the things implicitly pointed out by Peter Nagy, CEO of Gamesfarm, currently developing Vikings: Wolves of Midgard. When the conversation with him inevitably turned to the Xbox One Scorpio, he pointed out several important things- that an assessment of a console’s power couldn’t be made when just its GPU was a known quantity, given that there is so much more to a console than just that; that the Scorpio will be releasing near the end of 2017, at which point 6 TFLOPs may not even be that impressive to begin with; and finally, that a stronger console doesn’t necessarily mean better games if gameplay improvements are not allowed.

“It may look powerful now; but it shall be out on the market at the end of 2017 (at least that’s what they have on site),” Nagy said. “Also, it is important to note that the GPU is strong but CPU and memory are also essential for games development. So the standpoint cannot be taken only from GPU point of view but has to consider also other components. Strong GPU says that the console will be able to target 4K and VR; but it says not much about the gameplay itself. Currently 1080 GTX offers 9TFLOPs and until end of 2017 there will be at least another generation of graphics card released. So at the time it will hit the market it will be on par with average new gaming PC, or below.”

The PC comparison aside, however, Nagy did mention some of the things that he hoped he would be able to implement in his games thanks to Scorpio.

“But regardless of PC comparison where consoles inevitably fail, Scorpio will be something solid to work with and definitively the most powerful console on the market,” he conceded. “It will certainly allow developers to utilize new visual and gaming features in larger scale and develop visually more stunning games. We hopefully will be able to use more extensively dynamic terrain tessellation, better looking shaders, improved lightning techniques and at last (but not least) finally start with really working with 4k resolution which is in the moment tricky…”

I do agree with everything he has said here- while I don’t doubt that Scorpio will be the most powerful console on the market when it releases next year, we have no way of knowing how powerful until we know more about the system at all. And just having a better GPU or more power all around doesn’t necessarily mean better games- it can mean better looking games, but not necessarily better playing games, especially if Microsoft mandate parity with the original Xbox One, which right now it looks like they may do.

Update: The headline has been updated to correctly reflect the story.

Original story:

The PS4 Pro is now a thing, which means we can stop speculating about its impact on the market, and start actually analyzing that. One of the ways we do that is by talking to the developers who are working on games for the PS4, and asking them any questions we have about the PS4 Pro directly. So when we had a chat with Peter Nagy, CEO and Head of development at Gamesfarm, the folks currently developing Vikings: Wolves of Midgard, we decided to ask him some questions we have about the PS4 Pro.

We asked him, for instance, what he foresaw the PS4 Pro’s greatest weakness being- would it be the CPU, which had always been the weak link on the PS4, but would be even more so on the Pro, given the extent of improvements all other aspects of the console got? Nagy, however, felt that it would be something else entirely- it didn’t have to do with anything wrong with the architecture of the PS4 Pro itself, it had to do with the PS4 Pro’s compatibility mandate.

“The major problem for us as the developers is that there is going to be line-up of different but still same consoles with mandatory backwards compatibility,” he said. “So it only adds more requirements we have to take care of instead of focusing on the development. Tuning the game to a single platform is well possible; but tuning the game to multiple performance wise different platforms is very annoying and requires additional costs without any real gameplay benefits beyond some visual improvements. I understand that incoming VR and 4K has different needs but the market may become a bit overpopulated with income of XBOX ONE S and Project Scorpio.”

That said, he did also sound off on what specific weaknesses on the PS4 Pro would be, in his opinion- he pointed out that the memory and CPU would probably become bottlenecks for PS4 development going forward, even on PS4 Pro.

“I consider CPU and memory as primary drawbacks for PS4 – we already experienced certain performance issues during Vikings: Wolves of Midgard development… This did not improve a lot with PS4 Pro,” he said.

This is another admission from developers that having to support an additional SKU might be a problem, and I can empathize with them to an extent- I take note of the fact that so far, smaller developers have been the ones who have exclusively pointed out this problem at all. That said, as I have pointed out before numerous times, iterative consoles are the way of the future, and this transition period, while inevitably painful, is a necessary evil. I also cannot fault Sony for their overly conservative policies mandating compatibility with the PS4 Pro- they are treading new ground here, and they don’t want to alienate 50 million PS4 owners. I get it.

So, while I feel Nagy’s pain here, I must assert that I personally also feel that the PS4 Pro (and the Scorpio) are both blazing the trail for the future, and that the painful teething period will be worth it in the long run.