I am curious about the SSD. What capacity it might have. I mean in the PC world, SSD generally are more expensive in relation mechanical counterparts of equal size and even more so if they are higher capacity. The fact he says it will be a custom SSD leads one to believe this may not be a system you could swap the drive on. Unless they made it where it is using an M.2 drive (or surface mount flash storage) and an additional SATA connector to use for internal expansion.

No doubt you would be able to add more external storage. Im sure they have tested load times running various forms of storage attached.

If not less The next Xbox will be similar to the PS5.. They can't make it more powerful than the PS5 because of the Price... Unless MS is planning to make a huge loss which I doubt. Because I doubt if anyone will invest on a 700-1000$ Console.. PS5 will be around 499$ and it will perfect..

That's not smart on sony's part, now Microsoft now what they are working with and can adjust their console lol

Not true WickedLester, if you look at PS4 exclusives they outperform the Xbox One. It's not subjective, it's a fact. Horizon Zero Dawn and Uncharted 4 both achieved on a technical level what would have to have been scaled back on the Xbox One so that the average person could see the difference.

I don't know which machine will be more powerful at launch, as you all know developers worked with 4GB of RAM on the PS4 devkits for quite some time. Both companies have the ability to make their launch games very impressive and tweak the hardware for better performance in the last 6 months leading up to release.

It's tough developing for a new console that is generally shifting all the way up until the manufacturing deadline. Guerrilla Games did well with Killzone and we know how they killed it with Horizon Zero Dawn (the sequel that I would imagine will be a launch title -- for good and bad based on my reasoning.

Cross gen games can of course look quite a bit better on the next hardware, but designers are still limited to the game design choices that run on the PS4/Xbox One. The launch titles should and 99% most likely will look quite a big step up better.

I personally wonder what's going to happen with the Final Fantasy VII remake trilogy. Start one on current-gen and release the sequels on next-gen? Not sure I think that would be a smart move, but most likely that's what will happen,

Sony gave MS the specs to match, and can do a last minute fine-tuning based on MS reveal at E3. Based on this, Sony could make a decision about launching in March 2020 with lower spec, or November 2020 with higher spec. I'm certain they have a two-scenario or even three-scenario set up based on what will be revealed by their competition as this is very basic business strategy. You see what your competition does and have plans to be better than them, and that is what this Sony reveal was about. Ball's in MS's court now, but something tells me Sony outmaneuvered them yet again by this subtle move.

@darthv72

The SSD may not be the main system storage, you could put in an SSD of say 25-50GB and use it as a cache. It would be transparent to the developer, they just read and write data as normal, but behind the scenes, the system could be caching frequently used items on the SSD.

Lol you can say that about every console ever made. That’s just a dumb comment, of course it takes more than just Cash to get ahead in the console industry

I'm half expecting MS to go the opposite way from Sony. I think it's possible MS sees Stadia as a threat and may go all in on game streaming. They'll produce a console with decent high-end specs for local play but I expect they will talk a significant amount on xcloud. They won't beat Sony in any traditional console space. So the aim will be to change the game delivery model. MS's biggest problem is content. That is not something they can easily fix. They're a technology company, not an entertainment company. It's their Achilles heel.

@ Tapani
FFS! Now that you say that it all makes sense! The real reason Sony is not going to E3 is precisely that! They're tasking Cerny with revealing their hand (a bit of it anyway, like a rough sketch)) before E3 by talking to a well-known publication like Wired, knowing fully well that Miky will read it and fine tune their design of the next Xbox based on what Sony have revealed about theirs, then Miky should reveal their hand to the world, including of course to Sony at E3 this year, and Sony can use that to fine tune the design of the PS5 and reveal their real hand at E3 in 2020. Sony won't get pressurized to reveal anything in turn this E3 since they announced quite some time ago that they 're not taking part in it this year, leaving Miky unable to adjust to Sony's non-existent E3 reveal. And by the time E3 2020 is upon us Sony know they can reveal the final specs of the PS5, it will be too late for Miky to alter anything in the specs of the next Xbox.

Clever, oh man, that is a clever move!

@ 2pocalypse now
True, but noone wants to be mocked for having what is considered an underpowered system, esp. the more we move into high-end PC-like console specs. Both Sony and Miky have experienced it (with the PS2 and the Xbox One resp.) and I bet neither eant to be in that position again.

Same is true for Sony, though. Initially the PS4 would have had 4GB GDDR, but they changed it last minute to 8GB to counter XBO's.

Sony did a smart move. First of all, what they showed was the "slow" model. My best guess is, the article is a bit older; I wonder when was the interview to begin with. I suspect this is related to the 1.5GHz Zen / 1GHz Navi 10 APU (2G16002CE8JA2_32/10/10_13E9) spill early this year (Cerny even mentioned he was running the "slow version"). And it makes totally sense to link this to the second APU leak which now has a 3.2GHz (boost) and a 1.8GHz Navi chip (ZG16702AE8JB2_32/10/18_13F8). Now everything can still change. Not the raw specs, but it can be tuned. If the release date is March 2020 (which I think it will be), then only minor changes can be made; based on target price, how much head room the design has, and so on. Obviously they almost doubled the clock from the early prototype. But the current iteration seems to be closer to a production version. So on the chip level I doubt much will change. But the amount of RAM can at any time. Bandwidth can probably be tweaked with minor clock adjustments and so on.

I am really curious what MS is going to do. They are hyping expectations that they will show their next box at this years E3; but in truth, it is again at least 6 months delayed after the next playstation - else we would have more developer leaks coming out. Its not like, MS developers are in bigger fear than Sony devs to spill information; if it is sparse it simply is, because there is nothing to report. If they go all out and announce a final Anaconda at E3, they are shooting themselves in the foot. That gives Sony maybe 3 months to respond - and if they must can delay to 11/2020 which would give them even more time.But they need a marketing splash ASAP and what else can they do but boosting about their next gen(s). I however believe, the Anaconda will barely if at all beat the PS5; especially with the price. And Sony will start full scale production for an early 2020 launch late Q3/19 or Q4/19 (3-6 month lead time to fill stock for a massive launch in March).

Funny enough I have been through this with the PS4 launch; being a developer, remembering we had PS4 devkits months before XBO, and what MS delivered was basically some sort of XBO speced PC instead. MS put wayyy to much focus into the XBO-X and now got caught pants down again with the PS5; blows my mind these geniuses didn't see this coming. Out of curiosity I would like to see their XBOX numbers and how they think they can sell this after the PS5 (and the Anaconda) releases. Dropping it to 299?

@ju, thats wrong. they went with the 8 gigs of ram because Cerny persuaded Sony it was the best option, nothing to do with microsoft fgs.

@Sophisticated_Chap

Oh they do, it’s just not worth the time and $ to invest in it.

Sophisticated

"I just don't think Sony has the software engineers to make PS3 backwards compatibility happen....oh well."

Man! this dude.. Sony really did hurt you real bad this gen... Cheer up Man... Hope MS does something to keep you happy this gen... Lmao!...

Neonridr - ms copped flak and rightly so for 'focusing' on BC and other bullet points as opposed to creating new ips.

@Neonridr
The difference between MS and Sony. When this gen started, none of the systems had any backward compatibility. BC had to be implemented which means people have to do work to get it to work. I myself (and many others) rather MS focus on compelling games vs trying to get BC on the xbox one. Sony was focused on releasing good games (which they did) so the majority of PS4 owners didnt care for BC. But now the new Gen is about start, and Sony will have BC built in when the console is released. Im all for it. BUt if they were to release the PS5 without BC and tell us that they will work on it later, i would be against it.

fair enough guys, I can agree with everything you are saying :)

I still care about backwards compatibility. Always have. Any platform that doesn't have it is much less appealing to me. The PC has amazing backwards compatibility and that's one of the reasons it's my preferred platform.

“Can the PC "The Real Beast" play The last of us 2 ? So much for being a beast.”

eventually through PSnow it will, like other Ps4 exclusives that are making their way on there

I don't understand why you bring PC in a console thread.. Its not relevant.. PC is an open ended system unlike console.. You can change the spec on a PC any time you want....

This is why PC gaming is looked down upon. Because its elitists love bragging about how powerful PC gaming is, but don't have the AAA exclusive games to demonstrate it, and have to jump in on console threads that have nothing to do with PC all for the sake of ego.

You can brag all you want about how much you can mod GTA5 and Skyrim on PC. Me? I'm gonna be playing Red Dead Redemption 2, Spider-Man, Horizon: Zero Dawn, and eventually Death Stranding.

Ahh, I think you're having hard time spelling PS5 - Just think of 3 characters vs 2.
(keyboard issues, I get it)

Example:
PC - 2
PS5 - 3

(I'm Jk, to each their own. As far as I'm concerned, as long as we all are having fun nothing else matters. This who's machine is better, is just a part of the (fun) drama we have amongst our gamer society).

"eventually through PSnow "

lol....."eventually" ;. Microsoft has conditioned you well.