Albert Penello “denies” that Project Scarlett is weaker than PlayStation 5

Project Scarlett and PlayStation 5 will be Microsoft’s and Sony’s new consoles. Both companies seem quite committed to delivering the most powerful console ever made to the market. Recently, rumors coming from a former IGN US columnist said that the PS5 development kits proved more powerful than the Project Scarlett development kits. The rumor got a lot of attention because the head of the Xbox division himself, Phil Spencer, had said that the next Xbox would, without a shadow of a doubt, be the most powerful console ever created up to that date.

Albert Penello, who for 9 years was Senior Director of product planning at Microsoft and now works at Amazon, commented on the rumors. According to Penello, these rumors, which are (supposedly) based on the current hardware (dev kits) of Project Scarlett, should not be taken as absolute truth, because during the development of a new console several development kits are sent to studios, and these are “initial” kits that are weaker and do not represent the final hardware of the product, which always changes until its launch. Penello used as an example the Project Scorpio development kits, which were much weaker than the final hardware and basically served to give developers a direction to work in until the final specs were chosen. The first Project Scorpio (Xbox One X) kits were sent in 2016 (these were weaker than the final kits), and only in March 2017 were the kits with the final specs sent to developers.

Penello’s statement makes sense, because if we “go back in time” we can remember that the Xbox 360 specs were changed at Epic’s request, and even during the console’s announcement some specs can still change (according to rumors the PS4 would have only 4GB of RAM, but Sony raised that number to 8GB at the last minute after seeing that the Xbox One would have 8GB).

Who will win the war for the most powerful console? Let’s wait!