Xbox Scarlett will crush the PS5 on power and price, Microsoft claims

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Microsoft is “all-in” to defeat Sony

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Microsoft is all-in to crush Sony in the next console wars, claiming that the Xbox Project Scarlett will beat the PS5 in both performance and price. That’s what Xbox’s big chief Phil Spencer told the The Verge yesterday:

"I would say a learning from the Xbox One generation is we will not be out of position on power or price. If you remember the beginning of this generation we were a hundred dollars more expensive and, yes, we were less powerful. And we started Project Scarlett with this leadership team in place with a goal of having market success".

Phil Spencer, Microsoft Xbox chief

It’s not the first time that Microsoft has hinted that their intention is to beat the Playstation once and for all with unrivaled power and price. Recently, Sony claimed in a job listing that the PS5‘s power will surpass every other console, future and past, but then eliminated that statement from the ad. 

For sure, the Xbox Project Scarlett has plenty of potential bragging rights based on the list of phenomenal features, including a custom AMD Zen 2 procesor that promises four times the power of the Xbox One X, 4K resolution at a sustained 120 frames per second, 8K gaming resolution, and SSD unit with a 40x increase and no virtually no load times whatsoever. It’s also rumored that Scarlett may mark Microsoft entry into virtual reality gaming.

We don’t know if that will be enough to beat the PS5, though. Whatever happens, however, it will be hard to ignore the $20 a month Microsoft‘s Xbox All Access offer, which includes an upgrade to the Scarlett once it becomes available on the 2020 holiday season.

More Xbox models coming

But bragging aside, perhaps the most intriguing comment from Spencer is the claim that there will be plenty of Xbox models after Scarlett despite the rise of cloud gaming: “[...] we think there will be multiple generations ahead of us? I actually think there probably is. So we’re going all in. We’re all-in on Project Scarlett and I want to compete, and I want to compete in the right ways which is why we’re focused on cross-play and backward compatibility.”

We know that Microsoft is working on its own cloud-based play everywhere system, just like Sony and Google, which is about to launch its Google Stadia system. The latter seems bullish about its future, though, claiming that AI will help them obtain negative latency and better performance than any local machine, no matter its power. That‘s a bold claim, knowing that Stadia is launching without some of its most touted features, like wireless gamepads for non-Google devices. It’s a worrying situation for Google’s system, at least for now.

Perhaps that’s why Microsoft is anticipating that there still plenty of live left in the local game consoles, even while connectivity technology is quickly getting fast enough for cloud gaming all around the world.

Jesus Diaz
Jesus Diaz

Jesus Diaz founded the new Sploid for Gawker Media after seven years working at Gizmodo, where he helmed the lost-in-a-bar iPhone 4 story and wrote old angry man rants, among other things. He's a creative director, screenwriter, and producer at The Magic Sauce, and currently writes for Fast Company and Tom's Guide.