Rumor mill: Following last week's confirmation of the PlayStation 5's specs, next-generation consoles have become the industry's hot topic. The latest rumor claims that as powerful as Sony's machine is, it won't be as advanced as Microsoft's Xbox One X successor.
Sony's lead architect Mark Cerny unexpectedly revealed details of the PlayStation 5 last Tuesday. We now know it will be powered by AMD's 7nm third-generation Ryzen CPU (Zen 2), use a custom Radeon Navi graphics GPU, and support ray tracing and 8K resolutions.
That might sound pretty impressive, but Microsoft is said to be going one better. Ainsley Bowden, founder and head editor of Seasoned Gaming, tweeted that "multiple insiders" have confirmed that Microsoft's Anaconda will be more advanced than its rival.
Back in December, we heard that two new Xbox machines would make up Microsoft's next-gen lineup: a cheaper device codenamed Lockheart, which is thought to be an Xbox One S successor with performance comparable to the current Xbox One X; and Anaconda, the flagship console that, like the PS5, will likely feature high-end AMD hardware and an SSD.
Exactly how Anaconda will outperform the PS5 is still unknown, but the obvious answers would be a CPU with more cores and a faster clock speed, a more powerful GPU, extra RAM, and perhaps a faster SSD. This is no guarantee of success, of course; the Xbox One X is the most powerful console on the market right now, yet PS4s have sold almost double the number of Xbox One consoles.
Cerny called the PS5 price point "appealing," and analysts are expecting it to arrive at $499, so we can expect Microsoft's flagship to cost around the same. It seems 2020 will be an exciting year for gamers.