Xbox Scarlett is being designed to keep the PlayStation 5 in second place

I’m a big believer in the idea that graphics aren’t everything, but at the same time my primitive monkey brain starts flooding with dopamine the second I see some tasty 4K visuals running at 60 frames per second while a developer asks me to cast my gaze at revolutionary new technology that allows for accurate tooth decay to be rendered in a character’s mouth.

For many of us, getting games to run at their very best requires either a top-notch PC or one of the more recent mid-cycle console upgrades that Sony and Microsoft pumped out. Microsoft may have the edge in the current arms race with the Xbox One X, but that’s an advantage that came from them being absolutely manhandled by Sony in the first few years of this generation.

Remember the stories? Remember the console comparisons that highlighted how the base Xbox One console regularly delivered fewer peas and saw diminished frames per second every time the action got too hot on the screen? Going forward, Microsoft isn’t looking to kick off the next generation of console gaming on the technical backfoot again. “There are going to be areas where we should compete,” Xboss Phil Spencer said to Giant Bomb via Windows Central.

And those areas can lead to better outcomes when we compete but it’s still a world where in order for us to do better, you don’t have to do worse. Gaming is a better space when there are brands that people trust, where brands that have been around for decades continue to be around. I want Xbox obviously to be one of those.

We’re not building Scarlett to not be the best console. I want to be number one. I’m as competitive as anybody. But that doesn’t mean that I need somebody else to suffer from a business standpoint. I think raw power is very important. I don’t have a PS5 development kit, so I don’t know what they’re building. I will say that being a leader in consoles is what the team is committed to doing.

We aren’t building this program to try to aim for second place. We’re building it aiming for first place and that’s what I want to hit.

Spicy. Competition benefits everybody, and I’ve got a feeling that Microsoft is going to give Sony a hell of a fight in 2020 and beyond. The Xbox Game Pass program has proven to be a hit, the company has a ton of studios now working for them and the console coming next year is said to have quadruple the power of the Xbox One X.

Meanwhile, some reports indicate that Sony’s PlayStation 5 will be the more technically impressive beast in this reignited console war, with the boss of SEGA’s Yakuza game studio praising the console and what it’ll be capable of. The next console generation is going to be a hell of an interesting battle, only this time it won’t be so one-sided.

Last Updated: June 13, 2019