The point of this thread is to discuss feelings related to these two iterative boxes of hardware, and which one we think is a more effective approach... if either will be effective at all.
Personally, I think the PS4 Pro is a much smarter step. I've seen a lot of people around the internet treating the Scorpio's lead in power as a definitive reason as to why it'll succeed and Pro will fail. I don't think it's that simple though.
First thing's first, though this doesn't exactly mean much, the less powered consoles traditionally wins console wars. The NES was underpowered compared to the competition, and while Sega shot themselves in the foot with the add-ons, the Genesis was ahead for a short while. The PS1 was weaker than the N64, the PS2 was the least powerful console between it, the Xbox, and the Gamecube, and the 360 -while more powerful on the surface- won despite the PS3 having much more flexible hardware... with the Wii stomping them both. The PS4 is one of the only times a more powerful console is unequivocally winning.
The more important part of that really comes down to the reasons WHY these consoles won. The NES had smarter marketing, and a more robust library. The SNES was simple and cheap compared to a Genesis with a Sega CD and 32X. Gameboy beat the GameGear because of the price and library. PS1 also won because of the depth of the library, and because it chose the right time to pick up optical discs. 360 had a year with no competition (which among other things tempted those without patience to buy it, and also tempted those who wanted to play games online with said impatient friends), and the Wii tapped into the casual market. The list goes on. The point is, choosing which battles to fight and which ones not to is much more important than just power 9 times out of 10.
The way Microsoft is doing things is actually really risky, and will likely lead to little improvement in their average sales numbers unless they have some secret under their belt. There are a few reasons for this, mostly related to the cost, the release timing, and development.
1. First of all, cost is a large factor. Whether people want to believe it or not, cheaper consoles generally sell better. It's less of an investment, and therefore less of a risk. Most people who play on console would rather go for a cheaper alternative, even if it doesn't check all of the exact same boxes as the more expensive alternative. With all that the Scorpio is offering, it's no doubt going to be more expensive unless Microsoft decides to take huge losses for a while. Meanwhile, PS4 Pro is masked as a good deal, by simply releasing it around a time that they were likely going to give the normal model a price cut anyway, and simultaneously releasing it at the original launch price.
2. PS4 Pro is releasing earlier. It may seem like a small advantage, but that really helped the 360, the PS1, the PS2, and even the PS4. This is a huge lead, likely being around a year, meaning if the 4K and HDR stuff blows up in that time, PS4 Pro will be the only option for console owners during that year.
3. Development. This one requires reflecting on console generation transitions. Developing for multiple hardware configurations is complex, particularly the more drastic the difference between the configurations is. If you look at generation transitions, you always see one of two things. Either devs make a game for the previous generation (because of the large playerbase usually), and then port it up. That usually means the game is only marginally better on the more powerful console(s), because it can't take full advantage of the hardware. The alternative is creating the game for the stronger console, and porting down. But that often leaves the previous gen version lacking, barren, or at worst, broken.
With the way the PS4 Pro is designed, developers really only have to make one version of the game, for the base PS4, and do minor porting work to get it to play nicely with the Pro. The consoles aren't different enough for it to impact development much. As an example, the Pro upscales using the same assets the base model PS4 uses, meaning there's no need to work with higher resolution textures, or tell the game how to stream them and when to swap them out, etc. This lack of enormous hardware disparity ensures that the regular PS4 is much more likely to get consistent support, while Pro offers the guise of a near-full upgrade to a new generation of hardware (in terms of visual fidelity), without incurring the monetary or development costs of such hardware improvements.
Scorpio meanwhile will face the same problems that are always dealt with during console transitions. The two console versions are different enough in design and goals, that they'll really require a lot more work to get both to take full advantage of each hardware configuration. One then has to ask how things like competitive online performance will be handled for example. If a game can only hit 30fps at 4k on Scorpio, but is at 900p and 60fps on the Xbox One, those on the normal model have a distinct advantage. This is of course a problem the Pro and the PS4 will have as well, but it's much easier to deal with there, again, because the power of the two systems is much closer.
The only way I can see for it to work well for Scorpio, is if Microsoft really pushes development teams extremely hard to make sure both versions of games on the Xbox One and Scorpio take full advantage of their hardware. Otherwise, owners of one console or the other are going to get shafted in the process. They could get around this if development teams offered graphics options on console more often. That would require essentially just treating it like they would a PC port (it would still take lots of additional work though). But since they don't, the two different versions of the game will have to be offered on the same disc, but isolated from each other. There's also the issue with HDD and BluRay space, since Scorpio will supposedly use full 4K assets while the normal Xbox One will use lower resolution assets... and I don't think Microsoft is going to give it like a 4tb+ HDD. But that's beyond the scope of my point.
4. Finally, true 4K just isn't that big of a boost when compared to upscaling. With 4K you're really entering diminishing returns territory, not to mention a lot of people don't sit close enough to their televisions (when compared to computer monitors) to tell the difference. So again, a lot of Scorpio's advantage is likely going to be wasted simply because people won't think it looks markedly better than the PS4 Pro. You also have questions about whether developers will even WANT to take advantage of Scorpio's power. A lot of developers would rather have parity between consoles so as to get consistent sales across the board.
There are possible advantages to Scorpio's power, like better performance at 1080p or 1440p, higher graphical presets. But that's assuming Microsoft doesn't lose themselves in the search for native 4K. If they do, the compromises will be huge, making the whole thing more complicated for them. Regardless of what I think though, I look forward to your thoughts. It's quite possible I'm missing something
Personally, I think the PS4 Pro is a much smarter step. I've seen a lot of people around the internet treating the Scorpio's lead in power as a definitive reason as to why it'll succeed and Pro will fail. I don't think it's that simple though.
First thing's first, though this doesn't exactly mean much, the less powered consoles traditionally wins console wars. The NES was underpowered compared to the competition, and while Sega shot themselves in the foot with the add-ons, the Genesis was ahead for a short while. The PS1 was weaker than the N64, the PS2 was the least powerful console between it, the Xbox, and the Gamecube, and the 360 -while more powerful on the surface- won despite the PS3 having much more flexible hardware... with the Wii stomping them both. The PS4 is one of the only times a more powerful console is unequivocally winning.
The more important part of that really comes down to the reasons WHY these consoles won. The NES had smarter marketing, and a more robust library. The SNES was simple and cheap compared to a Genesis with a Sega CD and 32X. Gameboy beat the GameGear because of the price and library. PS1 also won because of the depth of the library, and because it chose the right time to pick up optical discs. 360 had a year with no competition (which among other things tempted those without patience to buy it, and also tempted those who wanted to play games online with said impatient friends), and the Wii tapped into the casual market. The list goes on. The point is, choosing which battles to fight and which ones not to is much more important than just power 9 times out of 10.
The way Microsoft is doing things is actually really risky, and will likely lead to little improvement in their average sales numbers unless they have some secret under their belt. There are a few reasons for this, mostly related to the cost, the release timing, and development.
1. First of all, cost is a large factor. Whether people want to believe it or not, cheaper consoles generally sell better. It's less of an investment, and therefore less of a risk. Most people who play on console would rather go for a cheaper alternative, even if it doesn't check all of the exact same boxes as the more expensive alternative. With all that the Scorpio is offering, it's no doubt going to be more expensive unless Microsoft decides to take huge losses for a while. Meanwhile, PS4 Pro is masked as a good deal, by simply releasing it around a time that they were likely going to give the normal model a price cut anyway, and simultaneously releasing it at the original launch price.
2. PS4 Pro is releasing earlier. It may seem like a small advantage, but that really helped the 360, the PS1, the PS2, and even the PS4. This is a huge lead, likely being around a year, meaning if the 4K and HDR stuff blows up in that time, PS4 Pro will be the only option for console owners during that year.
3. Development. This one requires reflecting on console generation transitions. Developing for multiple hardware configurations is complex, particularly the more drastic the difference between the configurations is. If you look at generation transitions, you always see one of two things. Either devs make a game for the previous generation (because of the large playerbase usually), and then port it up. That usually means the game is only marginally better on the more powerful console(s), because it can't take full advantage of the hardware. The alternative is creating the game for the stronger console, and porting down. But that often leaves the previous gen version lacking, barren, or at worst, broken.
With the way the PS4 Pro is designed, developers really only have to make one version of the game, for the base PS4, and do minor porting work to get it to play nicely with the Pro. The consoles aren't different enough for it to impact development much. As an example, the Pro upscales using the same assets the base model PS4 uses, meaning there's no need to work with higher resolution textures, or tell the game how to stream them and when to swap them out, etc. This lack of enormous hardware disparity ensures that the regular PS4 is much more likely to get consistent support, while Pro offers the guise of a near-full upgrade to a new generation of hardware (in terms of visual fidelity), without incurring the monetary or development costs of such hardware improvements.
Scorpio meanwhile will face the same problems that are always dealt with during console transitions. The two console versions are different enough in design and goals, that they'll really require a lot more work to get both to take full advantage of each hardware configuration. One then has to ask how things like competitive online performance will be handled for example. If a game can only hit 30fps at 4k on Scorpio, but is at 900p and 60fps on the Xbox One, those on the normal model have a distinct advantage. This is of course a problem the Pro and the PS4 will have as well, but it's much easier to deal with there, again, because the power of the two systems is much closer.
The only way I can see for it to work well for Scorpio, is if Microsoft really pushes development teams extremely hard to make sure both versions of games on the Xbox One and Scorpio take full advantage of their hardware. Otherwise, owners of one console or the other are going to get shafted in the process. They could get around this if development teams offered graphics options on console more often. That would require essentially just treating it like they would a PC port (it would still take lots of additional work though). But since they don't, the two different versions of the game will have to be offered on the same disc, but isolated from each other. There's also the issue with HDD and BluRay space, since Scorpio will supposedly use full 4K assets while the normal Xbox One will use lower resolution assets... and I don't think Microsoft is going to give it like a 4tb+ HDD. But that's beyond the scope of my point.
4. Finally, true 4K just isn't that big of a boost when compared to upscaling. With 4K you're really entering diminishing returns territory, not to mention a lot of people don't sit close enough to their televisions (when compared to computer monitors) to tell the difference. So again, a lot of Scorpio's advantage is likely going to be wasted simply because people won't think it looks markedly better than the PS4 Pro. You also have questions about whether developers will even WANT to take advantage of Scorpio's power. A lot of developers would rather have parity between consoles so as to get consistent sales across the board.
There are possible advantages to Scorpio's power, like better performance at 1080p or 1440p, higher graphical presets. But that's assuming Microsoft doesn't lose themselves in the search for native 4K. If they do, the compromises will be huge, making the whole thing more complicated for them. Regardless of what I think though, I look forward to your thoughts. It's quite possible I'm missing something