Can it not downscale to 1080p? 4K or 1440p downscaled to 1080p will look a lot better than 720p / 900p upscaled to 1080p. I doubt it's going to lock to a 720p/900p frame buffer if no 4K tv is detected. Especially with the bragging about dynamic scaling, at the very least it should run at a perfectly stable 1080p.

“Scorpio is designed as a 4K console, and if you don’t have a 4K TV, the benefit we’ve designed for, you’re not going to see."
To accomplish that they have to specifically check for a 4K TV, if not available revert to running at 1/6th the speed.

PR nonsense.

Seems like there won't be any 4K games. Every developer will choose to make their games look and run better at 1080p.

Implied. Intention doesn't imply its only use... 

I believe this will be the case. Prior to the first quote, it seemed like the Scorpio would only show its prowess on 4K TVs, but now there is a caveat or an 'out' so not all Scorpio designated games have to run at 2160P. I think this is the case because for some demanding games, it is simply unachievable. I don't think you would see games like Quantum Break II running at 2160P on Scorpio but you certainly could see a game like Ori and the blind forest 2 running at a full 2160P(4K) resolution just for example. Same goes with the Neo. 4k/2160P gaming is just too demanding for most AAA titles even on PC, the graphics cards needed to run demanding games on PC cost alot of money, probably more than the Scorpio itself. Just my opinion anyway, if MS or Sony pull it off, my hat goes off to them.

Isnt HDR a feature that you can only see on a 4K TV. I am sure MS games will render native at 4K and also use HDR which is already slated for Gears and Forza. So yes, there will be games that take advantage of Scorpio power to render native 4K HDR games.

Gears of War has already been revealed to run at 1080P on Xbox One:

"One thing we were able to do with Gears of War 4, is we've authored all the content in 4K resolution, so on Windows 10, if you've got a system that can support it, you're going to get high-res texture packs," he added. "You're gonna get a premium, 4K visual experience. And on Xbox One, we've totally optimized it for 1080p."

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-gears-of-war-4-will-look-incredible-on-xbox-on/1100-6441214/

Unless you are talking about the next Gears game? I understand what you mean though as there was a statement made the HDR would be implemented into Gears of War so I am confused also. Could the game be rendered natively at 1080P with HDR and then upscaled onto a 4K TV??

HDR is nothing to do with resolution. Perfectly usable at 1080p also HDR functionality is coming with the X1-Slim, a whole year before the Scorpio arrives.

Not sure where the problem is? In one quote he says that the console is designed for 4k and you won't see the benefit of it if you don't have a 4k TV.

In the other quote he says that devs can still decide to use the power for something else which could be used for better visuals on a 1080p TV.

So, for MS the main reason for Scorpio was 4k and that's why he said that only with a 4k TV you will really profit from what the console was mainly designed for but it's up to the devs where their priorities are with more power. You will obviously benefit from Scorpio with a 1080p TV if games will look better then but you won't see 4k on a screen not supporting 4k and with that “no difference if you have no 4k screen“. Well, it would be still better even on a 1080p screen but you obviously don't get a higher resolution to see.

You see no contradiction between those two statements?

I think even if all of the games on the X1 ran at 1080p you would still surely question why the 6teraflops would not make for a more stable framerate but the X1 library is littered with games which run at sub 1080p resolutions or dynamically dip from it when things get busy onscreen. Those games should all see a benefit from the Scorpio, suggesting they will not is just PR speak for "please continue to buy the system we're selling until holidays 2017"

Since the game is authored to 4K resolution, all the Xbox S or Scorpio need to do is render the image at 4K so the TV will output the HDR image.  So basically Xbox S will take that 1080P image and upscale it.  I am sure a patch will be out and ready when the scorpio arrives to have that same 4K content avaiable since it really would not be that hard to do since they are already doing it.