During a recent interview the head of the Xbox division stated that the company had learned a valuable lesson from the release of the Xbox One. Many gamers will remember that the original Xbox One wasn’t as powerful as the PS4, but the price tag was higher by $100.
To prevent such problems in the future, Project Scarlet was designed from the ground up in with performance in mind. As cloud gaming is gearing up to spread around the world some would argue that the era of physical consoles is close to an end, but this does not seem to be the case, according to Microsoft.
While some users may find cloud gaming attractive, the internet infrastructure is a bit weak in many countries, and a high number of gamers will continue to buy hardware units on which they can play their favorite titles without the need to worry about stuttering or input lag.
However, Sony has stated that their console will be stronger thanks to how the parts are assembled. The PS5 will use a customized version of the third-generation architecture, sporting eight cores, and being manufactured with the help of the 7nm Zen architecture. A custom-made Radeon Navi GPU can simulate 3D audio and offers support for ray-tracing.
Microsoft hasn’t been too willing to share the specs of the Xbox Scarlett, but it is known that is working with AMD to develop a custom system-on-chip platform. This means that the CPU and GPU are integrated into a fashion similar to the setups found in smartphones.
This SoC may use AMD Ryzen Zen 2 CPUs and a Navi GPU that harnesses the power of the upcoming Radeon RDNA architecture. This approach will allow the console to offer hardware-accelerated support for ray-tracing while also reducing the cost of manufacturing the console in the long run.
