Project Scorpio: The Most Powerful Place to Create and Play (The First Draft)
Just prior to Easter, Head of Xbox, the sexiest man in gaming and friend of Silent Protagonist Phil Spencer wrote for Xbox Wire, telling fans what they can expect at E3 (spoiler alert: Project Scorpio). The article was refined after many drafts, with Phil providing the kind of corporate message that keeps him employed.
First drafts, however, are a little different . This is something you can trust me on, as Silent Protagonist has a firm policy of only publishing first drafts.
Phil was kind enough to provide this first draft below (don’t you just love him?).
At Team Xbox we tried putting TV at the center of everything we do and we were driven to build the best platform on which to watch TV. We now know that people wanted something to play games on (which truly surprised everyone at Xbox — after two console generations, you want more games? Really?), which is why we’ve begrudgingly invested so much in new development tools, publishing opportunities, hardware and services for developers and gamers alike. With Project Scorpio, we created a console with the goal of being the ultimate place for developers to realize their visions so they’ll stop abandoning us like we’re the plague, and the best place to play any Xbox game which we hope to achieve with backwards compatibility, because the 360 actually had exclusives.
The creativity and innovation in our industry is driven by money. Enough money can launch a game that becomes a global phenomenon or even more money can create the industry’s biggest blockbuster. At GDC in March, we announced the Xbox Live Creators program, in a bid to get some content cheaply, because Xbox One isn’t making enough money for us to fully invest in content. When you combine that program with dev mode, which enables any retail Xbox One to be a developer kit, you have the cheapest path in the industry for us to score content for console and PC, hopefully reaching a handful of gamers around the world.
With Project Scorpio, we set a design goal of building the first true 4K console (because the PS4 doesn’t even have 4K blu-ray! Hah! See, we actually get bragging rights for something! Suck it, Sony!) for gamers with an emphasis on compatibility so we can claim we have some kind of library. Once we locked that plan, we set our sights on building the world’s most powerful console development platform, which includes the new Xbox One Development Kit and a full suite of software to get every ounce of performance from the platform. Like the retail console, we want to advertise it as the world’s most powerful, because it’s the one big selling point. We paid attention to logistical details, because people may develop for Xbox if it takes no extra work. The goal is to let creators focus their time and energy on bringing their game to life, and then bringing it to Xbox because they might as well, since there’s no extra work involved.
We’ve created the most powerful console with your money in mind. We’ve created the most powerful development platform with our industry’s creators making us money in mind. And, we’re unifying players across PC and console with Xbox Live, the fastest, most reliable multiplayer network and Beam, because we’re promoting that too. Ultimately, we know you care most about great games, whether they be exclusive, multiplatform, independent or AAA. We want you playing games coming this year that will only be playable on Xbox One and will play better on Project Scorpio. We don’t want you buying a PS4. We designed Project Scorpio to be the best console to convince you not to buy a PS4. Please don’t buy a PS4. Please.
I’m proud of the progress made with Project Scorpio and what it will mean for the creators who have abandoned us for PlayStation. On behalf of everyone at Team Xbox, please give us your continued passion and support. We’re excited to unveil Project Scorpio and some game experiences (instead of TV shows) it powers at E3 this June.
