A clearer look at how the Xbox One S steps up your gaming
Before the "Scorpio" Xbox launches, we get the Xbox One S this fall. Among the upgrades it offers over the 2013 model is support for High Dynamic Range.
In games that support it, HDR promises some level of improvement -- but don't make the mistake of confusing that with what Scorpio is to offer. Xbox boss Phil Spencer laid out the facts for Mashable in an E3 2016 interview.
"From a gaming standpoint, I want you to take away it's the same," he said.
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"It's the same teraflops that the [launch] Xbox One is, so from a pure game standpoint ... it will play your Xbox One games the way your original Xbox One did."
The HDR difference could provide marginal improvements, provided a game supports it, but it's not a case of a beefed up machine delivering a better picture because of its improved processing power.
"This box will support high dynamic range games, but it doesn't increase the compute abilities that those games can take advantage of," Spencer said.
"What it will do, if you take it and plug it into a 4K TV, is it will hardware-upscale your 1080p game or your 900p game or whatever ... resolution that game is running at, up to 4K. It's not adding more pixels to the game, but the game will show up using all 4K pixels that are on your TV."
"From a pure game standpoint it will play your Xbox One games the way your original Xbox One did."
This is very different from the native 4K picture that Scorpio will deliver. Spencer's reference to the 2017 console's teraflops provides a measurable; an imperfect one, but close enough for our purposes here.
Without launching into an overly technical explanation, the Scorpio graphic processor's (GPU) 6 teraflops put it somewhere between the popular GTX 980 (5.3 teraflops) and GTX 980 Ti (6.5 teraflops) from Nvidia.
Both of those cards are powerful enough to support native 4K gaming on a computer, usually with an individual game's graphics settings falling somewhere in the low to medium range. Though consoles are purpose-built for gaming, and they can often do more with what's in the box than a PC with the same spec could.
All of which is to say: teraflops aren't everything. Just for the sake of comparison, the Xbox One and Xbox One S both cap out at around 1.3 teraflops. That's roughly on par with the GTX 480, which Nvidia released in 2010. Even the current Xbox One can output game performance that a PC equipped with a GTX 480 couldn't dream of touching.
It's important to be clear on these distinctions if you want to better understand what kind of performance boost you're looking at in an Xbox One S versus a Scorpio. The One S doesn't boost performance, but it does stand to deliver a richer color palette on 4K UHD TVs in games that support HDR.
That isn't to say the One S is without its benefits. But if you're looking for a performance increase, this isn't the console you're looking for.
"The real advantages [of the One S] are in 4K video streaming," Spencer said. "So as services like Netflix, Amazon and other people adapt 4K, it supports that. And it's got a 4K UHD Blu-ray drive in it.
"Frankly at the price point, some of the 4K UHD Blu-ray drives on the market standalone are [as much as $500]. So the fact that it's $299 as a 4K UHD drive, just for that is a pretty good value."
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
