The war for the most powerful versions of desktop consoles was officially launched in 2016 with the PS4 Pro and Project Scorpio presentations. The first one went on sale at the end of the year and the second will hit stores before the end of 2017.
Sony opted for a more powerful version than the original PS4, but also released the Slim version of its console. The same thing happened with Microsoft, which debuted the Xbox One S and reserved the new edition of the console for this new year.
After knowing the first technical details of Project Scorpio, Phil Spencer of Microsoft has talked about the suitability of launching PS4 Pro in 2016 and the new machine of his company a year later. The Xbox spokesman explained the decision in an interview to Gamasutra.
In his own words: “PS4 Pro was a good decision for the year 2016.” Spencer jokes that he can get into trouble if he “talks about Sony too much,” but does not hesitate to give his opinion about the strategy that the Japanese company has followed with its consoles.
“I’ve said it publicly and I’ve said it privately, I think they’ve built a good 2016 PS4 Pro. With the silicon that was available, they picked the parts that made sense to go and put together a console in 2016,” the Microsoft executive explains.
Spencer notes that it is important to match the price with the hardware power so as not to harm users, and believes that Sony’s decision to launch PS4 Pro was balanced for the road that could be traversed in with the technology available twelve months ago.
In this sense, Spencer has acknowledged that they did not launch Scorpio in 2016 because with the available hardware it was not possible to achieve the quality standards that had been proposed in Microsoft. The new console will go on sale later this year.
