Microsoft’s Xbox One Scorpio Games Will Have Native 4K Rendering Resolution

Xbox One titles from Microsoft that get support specifically for the Xbox One ‘Scorpio’ will render in 4K without any upscaling. Xbox publishing general manager Shannon Loftis told USA Today.

“Of all the games we make that come in the Scorpio timeframe, we make sure they run in native 4K,” the lady says. By “games we make,” she’s probably referring to first-party titles, so developed or published by Microsoft and its subsidiaries themselves.

While Loftis’ statement that a 4K console will actually render in 4K may not seem surprising, that may not be the case with the competition. About the 4K variant of the PlayStation 4, the PS4 Pro, PlayStation headlining Andrew House recently said that “I think the majority of games will be upscaled to 4K, based on the game portfolio I’ve seen so far.” .’ While that statement certainly leaves room for future PS4 Pro games that will run in native 4K, it does paint the picture that at least when it’s released, Scorpio may have more native 4K games than the PS4 Pro at its release.

The PlayStation uses a kind of upscaling technique called checkerboard rendering, in which half of the pixels of images are rendered in a checkerboard pattern, after which the other half is filled in via extrapolation. Despite not being native rendering, Digital Foundry describes the end result as a “highly desirable quality upgrade over 1080p, one that makes good use of a 4K display.”

The differences in rendering resolution are also mirrored by other differences between the two consoles. The PS4 Pro will be on the market in November, while the Xbox One Scorpio will only be available ‘late 2017’, i.e. a year later. In addition, it is already known that the GPU of Scorpio will have 6 teraflops of computing power and the PS4 Pro 4.2 teraflops. The differences in CPU computing power are not yet clear, as is the difference in price. The PS4 Pro will cost at least 399 euros.

The announcement of Project Scorpio; images of the console itself are not there yet