Leaked emails have revealed Xbox boss Phil Spencer’s ideas about PlayStation 5 again in early 2020.
Sony revealed a deep dive into PS5 in March 2020 with a broadcast wherein PS5 lead system architect Mark Cerny confirmed its {hardware} specs.
The announcement revealed PS5 features a customized eight-core AMD Zen 2 CPU clocked at 3.5GH and a customized GPU primarily based on AMD’s RDNA 2 structure {hardware} that promised 10.28 teraflops and 36 compute items clocked at 2.23GHz, in addition to 16GB of GDDR6 RAM and a customized 825GB SSD.
Spencer wrote the e-mail to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and chief monetary officer Amy Hood “after almost 12 hours of soaking in their unveil, taking apart their specs and looking at the community responses”. He clearly sounds captivated with Microsoft’s console prospects, realizing full properly what the Xbox Series X and S would supply when it went on sale alongside the PS5 later that 12 months (who remembers the teraflops conflict?). Coming off the again of the final technology and the Xbox One, which was considerably underpowered in comparison with the PlayStation 4, Microsoft got down to guarantee it had the strongest console on the market with the Xbox Series X, and the PS5 specs reveal in March 2020 confirmed that place.
“We have a better product than Sony has, not just on hardware but equally important on the software platform and services on top of the hardware,” Spencer wrote. “We have the elements of a profitable plan. I felt the suggestions from the BoD dialogue on being too assured and possibly this may simply reinforce that notion, I get the must be humbly assured however at present was a great day for us.
“We haven’t received something. And I do know we’ve exhausting discussions about pricing, P&L, investments and so forth. This mail isn’t attempting to scoop any of that, these discussions actually matter. But we will take confidence in our product fact right here and I do imagine any dialog wants to begin with believing in that. This was a great day for Xbox.”
Of course, this e-mail was despatched three-and-a-half years in the past, and rather a lot has occurred since the present technology kicked off. While the PS5 has proved an infinite gross sales success, gross sales of the Xbox Series consoles have struggled in latest occasions, with powerful year-on-year comparisons and a lightweight launch slate of exclusives.
In truth, throughout the Federal Trade Commission versus Microsoft trial in June, Microsoft admitted Xbox had formally “lost the console wars”.
A bit of a doc submitted by Microsoft described its entry into the gaming business in 2001, when its authentic Xbox console was outsold by each Sony and Nintendo by a “significant margin”. And, per Xbox, it hasn’t stopped “losing” the “console wars” ever since.
“Xbox’s console has consistently ranked third (of three) behind PlayStation and Nintendo in sales. In 2021, Xbox had a share of 16% while Nintendo and PlayStation had shares of [redacted] and [redacted], respectively. Likewise for console revenues and share of consoles currently in use by gamers (‘installed base’), Xbox trails with 21% while PlayStation and Nintendo have shares of [redacted] and [redacted], respectively.”
Microsoft is at the moment embroiled in maybe the largest, most devastating leak in Xbox historical past, with FTC trial paperwork revealing its plans for a mid-gen Xbox refresh in 2024, a next-gen hybrid Xbox in 2028, and Bethesda’s launch schedule. A leaked e-mail revealed Phil Spencer actually needs to purchase Nintendo. There’s additionally phrase of a possible one-hand Xbox controller.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
