It’s not often you look at a dev kit and go, “Man, I want that.” But how many consoles have an LED panel on the front you can program to play games on?
We’ll see what the consumer version of Scorpio looks like Monday, but for now Microsoft is happy to show off the dev kit. According to the teaser posted this morning, there’s some key physical differences between the dev kit and retail Scorpio. The latter, for instance, doesn’t have an LED panel on the front that works as a frame rate counter, or a second screen that can be programmed to run games like Snake.
The dev kit also comes with two network ports, an additional 1TB SSD, and an extra 12GB of GDDR5 RAM over the consumer Scorpio kit:
According to a quip from Larry Hryb, the back of the Scorpio dev kit and retail Scorpio look very, very similar, so here’s an indication of what you can expect:
There’s five programmable buttons on the front, three USB ports with plenty of space between each other and the console itself (thank you, Microsoft), and the dev kits can be stacked:
Kevin Gammill, group product director for Project Scorpio, confirmed that the dev kit would have all the same ports as the retail Scorpio release. Interestingly, the Scorpio dev kit has five USB ports: three located on the front panel, and two on the back.
You can view the full video below. It’s a nice looking box, and it’ll be fun to see what consumer Scorpio looks like next week.
Comments
3 responses to “The Project Scorpio’s Dev Kit Sounds Way Cooler Than Project Scorpio”
I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’re going to be selling these dev kits to the wider public. Obviously not as a consumer product, more like any of the numerous VR dev kits over the years. Cause it’s weird they have a long video openly talking about a console dev kit, when that’s something that’s just not done. Plus the bit were they talk about wanting to create an open source community of accessories/applets for the scorpio devkit.
Maybe I’m just dreaming here, but an easier to get a hold of dev kit + streamlined indie certification/release program would be awesome.
I was thinking the same thing. If they get a wider audience of developers making custom apps for media servers, DVRs etc. Microsoft can use that to promote the console as being for much more than just games. They tried that with XBox-One too, but most people would still think of that as a games console.
I just hope it isn’t white.
Ideally black and woodgrain veneer, like the original 2600 – would look best on my shelf. I’m suspecting they’ll go black with silver highlights though – to complement the Elite controller.
And I’d dare say there’ll be a nod to the OG Xbox somehow in the final design….