Microsoft and Sony are breaking precedent with plans to release mid-generation console refreshes in the near future. Whether or not gamers buy them in droves remains to be seen but you can rest assured that both sides will do their best to hype the new machines (sometimes at the expense of the other).

Sony at this point has revealed a great deal about its PlayStation 4 Pro. Microsoft, meanwhile, is playing its cards close to its chest, instead electing to reveal details about Project Scorpio in small batches.

The latest tidbit comes courtesy of Microsoft Studios Publishing general manager Shannon Loftis who recently revealed to USA Today that all games they are launching in the Scorpio time frame will run natively at 4K.

The wording here is important - games they are making, meaning first-party titles. What third-party studios do is seemingly up to them.

The admission comes in the wake of the PlayStation 4 Pro's unveiling a couple of weeks ago and Sony's interpretation of 4K gaming - specifically, the fact that most games won't be rendered natively in 4K but rather, upscaled. In terms of raw processing power, we already know that Microsoft's upcoming console will be faster than Sony's.

Some may argue that the original PlayStation 4 and Xbox One should have had support for 4K resolution from the get-go but that would have required delaying their launch by a couple of years as the hardware available at the time simply wasn't capable of delivering the processing power to drive that many pixels.

Sony's PlayStation 4 Pro is slated to arrive on November 10 priced at $399. Critically, Microsoft's Project Scorpio - we don't even know what it'll actually be called - won't hit retail until the 2017 holiday season.

Lead image courtesy Bloomberg / Getty Images