Microsoft Downplays Panic Over Expensive ‘Xbox One Scorpio’

The price for Microsoft’s highly anticipated “Xbox One Scorpio” has not been announced yet, but it’s already generating waves of panic among gamers. Many are thinking that the console is going to be absurdly expensive, much like what the original “PlayStation 3” cost when it launched. As a result, Xbox boss Phil Spencer has been doing damage control, downplaying the fears regarding the console’s price.

Speaking to NZ Gamer, Spencer said that the price of the console is unlikely to be as high as a lot of gamers fear. He explained that “Scorpio” is definitely going to come at a higher price than the “Xbox One S,” simply because of its premium quality. A premium price is only natural. However, he also said that they didn’t design the console to be too expensive.

"We thought about the price performance of what we wanted to hit with the Scorpio, relative to what we were going to be able to do with the S," he said during the interview. "So that we would have a good price continuum, so people wouldn’t look at these two things as so disconnected because of the price delta."

However, it seems that Microsoft is going to have more than just the price of the console to deal with. In a recent interview with The Guardian, Xbox planning division head Albert Penello says that the new capabilities of the “Scorpio” are going to present some challenges for developers.

Saying that they have pretty much left it to the developers to take full advantage of the extra juice with the upcoming console, Penello explained that each company will need to choose which areas to focus on. This setup means that studios will need some time to acclimate to the new resources that they have access to in order bring out the best in their games.

Penello used current game engines as examples such as Unreal and Frostbite to say that developers now have an excellent grasp of what they can offer. Over time, he believes that they will also learn to handle “Scorpio’s” considerable muscle.