A Microsoft program manager who has worked on the Xbox team calls the PS5 reveal “unfortunate.” Sony was criticized by some fans for the way that it officiallyconfirmed the PS5’s specsas it was incredibly technical and didn’t confirm some of the information that they wanted.
In a new episode of the Dealer Gaming podcast, William Stillwell, a principal program manager at Microsoft who has also been part of the Xbox team, gave his thoughts about the PS5 reveal. Stilwell compared the PS5 reveal to an Inside Xbox stream where the “audience expectations don’t match what the content plans are.” This is what happened with this week’s Inside Xbox stream where the team revealednew information about games likeGroundedbut didn’t give viewers the Xbox Series X announcements that they wanted.
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Stillwell also said that “I think what you saw [with the PS5 reveal] was the unfortunate by-product of a GDC talk being turned into a marketing event.” The PS5 reveal, which is what Sony had planned to do at GDC which has an industry audience, was one of the first times the company had officially confirmed information about the console. Some fans had thought that Sony could confirm the PS5’s price and others thought that it could reveal somegames in the PS5 launch lineup. However, when this didn’t happen, some fans criticized the company.
The way that the console’s specs were revealed also led many to compare it to the Xbox Series X specs which had been confirmed weeks before. ThePS5does have fewer teraflops than the Xbox Series X and some think that this makes the Microsoft console much more powerful than Sony’s. Stillwell, who “loved” the PS5 reveal and thinks that Sony has some “cool tech,” thinks this way too and said that Microsoft isn’t “worried about the power narrative.”
Stillwell’s comments don’t seem to be malicious and he isn’t saying anything that critics haven’t. After the PS5 reveal, some developers suggested that thePS5’s SSD is more importantthan the Xbox Series X' teraflops and could do more for game development. Fans have also been excited about the new PS5 DualSense controller.
These other features may not mean much though if Sony is unable to give fansthe information that they want. This could take a bigger PS5 event with game reveals but it’s unclear when Sony may do this.
