Microsoft: PS4 Pro is not enough to do true 4K

PS4 Pro’s 4.2 teraflops of processing power is not enough to run true” 4K, Microsoft said.

I think there are a lot of caveats they’re giving customers right now around 4K,” Microsoft’s Albert Penello told Eurogamer. They’re talking about checkerboard rendering and up-scaling and things like that. There are just a lot of asterisks in their marketing around 4K, which is interesting because when we thought about what spec we wanted for Scorpio, we were very clear we wanted developers to take their Xbox One engines and render them in native, true 4K.

That was why we picked the (6 teraflop) number, that’s why we have the memory bandwidth we have, that’s why we have the teraflops we have, because it’s what we heard from game developers was required to achieve native 4K.”

Sony has recently had to stand up to accusations that PS4 Pro’s upscaling techniques mean that its 4K marketing is a little deceptive. And it’s a point Microsoft is clearly keen to power home.

I know that 4.2 teraflops is not enough to do true 4K,” he added. I feel like our product aspired a little bit higher, and we will have fewer asterisks around the 4K experiences we deliver on our box.”

The answer as to why Sony arrived at different spec requirements could well be price, of course. Most were surprised at PS4 Pro’s comparatively low 350 RRP. How much are Scorpio’s 6 teraflops going to cost?

Well, we haven’t announced the price yet, so we’ll see. It will be an interesting discussion next time we chat.”

Also touched upon was the idea that both companies were being reactive to one another.

The most shocking thing about all of this is how Sony and us arrived at a similar strategy, even though the execution is different in nuanced ways,” Penello insisted. Certainly this is a pretty revolutionary idea.

When we announced Project Scorpio at E3, to do this kind of mid-console upgrade, and Sony clearly had their plans, which were very similar. I just think that’s interesting, for what it’s worth. It’s a pretty revolutionary idea to have two companies arrive at.”