Update 2: Albert Penello said he misspoke and that the console has 320 GB/s of memory.
Update 1: Albert Penello confirmed the console featured 384 GB/s of memory which is more than the 320 GB/s first specified.
During a heated interview with Eurogamer; Albert Penello, the planning Executive for Xbox over at Microsoft had some interesting comments about the PlayStation 4 Pro, and more importantly their mindset when building the upcoming ‘monster’ called Project Scorpio.
According to Penello, he was quite surprised that both Microsoft and Sony could end up with the same mindset about how console gaming is evolving. It’s well known that Sony started working on the Pro version of their now replaced console the day they announced it way back in 2013. Microsoft seems to have started around the same time as well since Penello discussed the fact that the 4K Blu-Ray player was decided upon quite some time ago.
“We had to make those decisions long ago. So it’s funny how much people think we act or react to what Sony’s doing. But this decision was locked a long time ago. And it largely was driven by two things: one, a personal belief in 4K. This will be an interesting conversation that the next time you and I chat we can continue to have.”.
According to Penello, they wanted to make sure that the Xbox One S was globally viable when deciding on the specifications. Users in countries outside the US might have trouble getting access to sufficient bandwidth to stream 4K content, hence the console launching with 4K physical media playback built in.
Amongst the back and forth about why Microsoft decided to go with physical 4K media playback–like that is such a bad thing–Microsoft also gave some insight into how they see their current competition, namely the PlayStation 4 Pro
“But I know that 4.2 teraflops are not enough to do true 4K. So, I feel like our product aspired a little bit higher, and we will have fewer asterisks around the 4K experiences we deliver on our box.”
Albert Penello threw a few jabs at Sony for not being completely honest about what their Pro was capable of, pointing to the several ‘asterisks’ when it came to how the console was ‘4K ready’. Microsoft stated that when they wanted to move up, they wanted to ensure that their games would be able to achieve true 4K rendering when the developers aimed for it. Microsoft also stressed that they won’t force developers to render at 4K if they didn’t want to.
It’s well known that the PlayStation 4 Pro seems like a rather lackluster upgrade for the PlayStation 4 series, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out for Sony.
Source: Eurogamer
Dreyer was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 139 articles across opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative. They post on X as @dreyer_smit.