As you might expect, Microsoft was following Sony’s PS5 announcement very closely. Sony announced the full technical specs for the PS5 in March 2020, following which Xbox executives sent Xbox chief Phil Spencer and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella an overview of Sony’s console and an internal email. was decided to be provided. FTC vs. Microsoft Exposure of the incident. More than two years later, Microsoft has responded to Sony’s PS5 price hike.
The email shows Liz Hamlen, Xbox’s former head of platform engineering and hardware, pointing out the pros and cons of Sony’s PS5 specs compared to Microsoft’s Xbox Series X. I am. Mark Cerny, head of PlayStation hardware, detailed the specifications of the PS5 just two days before Microsoft officially announced it. Xbox Series X specifications.
Hamren lists various GPU and CPU clock rates for the PS5. sustained Fee. ” Hamlen admits that Sony has a clear advantage in his SSD performance for his PS5.
Mr. Cerny spoke at length about the transition to SSD and the benefits for game developers and consumers. For higher raw throughput (twice ours due to slightly better hardware compression and associated performance improvements) as opposed to a more integrated streaming architecture enabled by sampler feedback streaming is optimized for.
Elsewhere, 12 teraflops performance and Sony’s 10 teraflops performance were also briefly discussed. “[Cerny] We emphasized that GPU teraflops and CUs are not a good measure of performance. We made the same case for Digital Foundry, with a clear performance advantage (12 vs. 10),” he wrote Hamren.
The former Xbox executive also said Cerny “spent a seemingly disproportionate amount of time on audio innovation,” but the rest of this discussion is redacted from the email chain. Hamren also claims that Sony’s expandable storage solution for his PS5 is “actually similar to ours in terms of minimum size and speed requirements.” But in practice, Sony’s approach means that consumers can use their regular NVMe SSDs instead of the proprietary, more expensive Xbox drives that are only available from Seagate and Western Digital.
Even though Microsoft didn’t immediately raise Xbox prices, it also quickly responded to Sony’s PS5 price increase last year in an internal email. Xbox CFO Tim Stewart sent an email to Xbox Chief Executive Spencer and Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood in the early morning hours of Sony’s 2022 announcement, saying the Xbox team was “anticipating this. “Now that we have confirmation, we are moving swiftly toward the plan.”
Although the email series is controversial and has been heavily redacted, Spencer seems to want the company to remain focused on gamers, even if it raises prices. Ami Silverman, Microsoft’s head of consumer sales and marketing at the time, responded: vs lose being a follower. ”
Silverman is clearly referring to how Xbox sales are lagging behind PlayStation sales, and how Microsoft itself doesn’t want to lose momentum by raising Xbox prices on the heels of Sony’s price increase. Microsoft repeatedly mentioned that it lost the console war and was in a distant third place during the game. FTC vs. Microsoft Hearing.
Spencer then explained that he purchased the PS5 in August 2022. “Sony has forced us to bundle HZD for $50.” [additional] For a while,” Spencer said. “I bought a PS5 two weeks ago and my only option was the $549 HZD bundle.” HZD incorrectly references horizon zero dawn Here, as is Horizon Forbidden West What Sony bundled with PS5.
These conversations may explain why Microsoft held off on raising the price of the Xbox Series X for nearly a year. In August, Microsoft increased the price of Xbox Series X in most countries except the United States, Japan, Chile, Brazil, and Colombia. The updated Xbox Series X console price is roughly in line with the price increase Sony announced for the PS5 in 2022.