PS5 Vs. Xbox Scarlett: So Far These Things Look Almost Identical, With One Big Difference

Details are starting to roll in about Xbox Scarlett and PS5, as both Sony and Microsoft slowly churn this hype train into gear to start selling new consoles next holiday season. We just got a new drop of info about the PS5, including the fact that it’s actually called the PS5, that it will have ray tracing baked into the hardware, and that it will have more sophisticated rumble and haptic feedback on the controller. That comes along with a bunch of stuff we already know: it will have an SSD, a custom AMD CPU and GPU, etc. Slowly but surely, we’re getting an idea of what’s going inside the new box.

It’s exciting, but it’s hard not to notice that we keep hearing essentially the same things about Xbox Scarlett. While there are differences between the custom AMD hardware that Microsoft and Sony will be using, the two companies are throwing around all the same benchmarks to describe performance: 4K with the possibility of 8K, ray tracing, 120 FPS, and so on. Both will feature SSDs, arguably the most significant upgrade that we’ll see in the upcoming generation, and both have used very similar language when discussing how those SSDs will change the user experience and game design. One will likely gain a slight power edge over the other once we finally get genuine specs and the chance to test them on some actual games, but again, they’re shooting for similar benchmarks and I’d be surprised to see a massive difference when the rubber hits the road.

The biggest differences, for now, are about the level of detail we have access to, not the details themselves. Sony has told us all about its advanced controllers, but Microsoft has yet to do so: I get the feeling that when it does, a lot of it is going to sound similar to what Sony has already said.

Joystic. Close up macro view from Dualshock 4 wireless controller.

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Services are also looking similar. Microsoft has Game Pass, but Sony is attempting to upgrade PlayStation Now to something more like a functional Game Pass competitor. Ditto for game streaming, which Microsoft will pursue through Project Xcloud and Sony will also pursue through PlayStation Now. They’ve both got backward compatibility, and they’ll both support cross-play as part of an industry-wide trend. They will both, naturally, come out in Holiday 2020. We don’t have prices yet, so one company could pull a surprise in that direction and likely win the generation as a result. Last generation both Microsoft and Sony demonstrated their ability to pack in a lot of power for a low price–Sony with the PS4, Microsoft with the Xbox One X. This is different from the beginning of the Xbox One/PS4 generation. When these two consoles were first announced, they were actually pretty different. Xbox was positioned as a multimedia/streaming device focused around the Kinect 2.0 motion controller, the PS4 a traditional gaming console with slightly better hardware, a lower price point and a more generous attitude towards used games. We all know how that worked out, but the core hardware was similar enough that Xbox was able to do a 180 and remove, essentially, all the stuff that wasn’t a PS4– about a year into the console generation both machines became functionally identical. Sure, the PS4 was marginally more powerful. But in the grand scheme of things, these were two deeply similar boxes once Microsoft reconfigured its messaging and stripped out the Kinect.

So what’s the difference? In essence, it’s the same difference that we had this generation, once the dust settled. With everything we know so far, it still looks like these are similar boxes defined by differences in exclusive software. That’s what allowed PS4 to keep up its launch momentum and dominate the generation with major titles like Bloodborne, Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Uncharted 4, Spider-Man and more, and that was Microsoft’s biggest weakness as the years went on. We don’t have any confirmed PS5 games yet, and we only know one Scarlett game: Halo Infinite.

Barring any significant price difference, that’s where this battle is going to be fought. And right now it’s Sony’s fight to lose: if Microsoft’s big play for more exclusive software can’t match Sony’s already sterling lineup, PlayStation will likely reign supreme again. If Microsoft rises to the occasion we’ll probably see something more like a dead heat.