Shots fired. Phil Spencer defended the comments made by Xbox executives in response to the lackluster PlayStation 4 Pro reveal. As you know, PlayStation 4 Pro isn’t powerful enough to render modern games at native 4K and has to settle for small indies while Microsoft has promised that all of their first-party games like Gears of War 4 will be at native 4K at launch. Rod Fergusson even said that Gears of War 4 will be 4K 60 FPS during multiplayer on Xbox Scorpio. The website, gamesindustry.biz, seemed a little upset that they were taking so many shots so they asked Spencer about it. You can read the passage from the interview below where Spencer said it was fine and that the team remained respectful.
Spencer did not address the more forthright statements made by Penello, who said, “I think there are a lot of caveats Sony is giving customers right now around 4K. Sony is talking about checkerboard rendering and up-scaling and things like that.” Nevertheless, Spencer believes that his team remained respectful. “I don’t think we crossed the line there, but as it was going on I also made sure that we remain respectful. Confident, but respectful of what other people are doing.”
I think Xbox executives remained respectful but calling out Sony’s false 4K claims when the majority of games are using checkerboard rendering is correct. Also, calling out the lack of 4K Blu-ray disc support is valid. Many countries around the world have bandwidth restrictions and even Comcast now is limiting mine. Instead of paying that extra $50 every month for overages, I would buy 4K versions of the Blu-ray movies to play on an Xbox One S. This is a luxury people living in places with advanced internet providers have but there are countless others who live in nations which don’t offer that or in rural areas. How is the lack of a 4K Blu-ray drive fair to them? Sony needs to reevaluate the choices it made with the PlayStation 4 Pro and PlayStation 4 slim. I’m glad Microsoft is calling out Sony for their anti-consumer practices. I’m also glad Spencer is sticking up for his team rather than giving into some upset fanboy who’s interviewing him.
Source: gamesindustry.biz
Asher is a games journalist, former News Writer (Gaming) at Windows Central. They contributed 1110 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: wrote over 1,100 ICXM pieces on Xbox news, hardware reviews, and platform commentary before joining Future plc’s Windows Central in 2017.