There have been a couple of pictures of PlayStation 5 dev kits floating around online, giving us all a good look at one of the new consoles that’ll be on the market about this time next year. The thing is, we’ve not seen much about Project Scarlett, and it’s starting to make some people think that Microsoft’s next generation offering won’t be any good.
However, a recent Tweet from Tom Warren, Senior Editor for The Verge, shines a different light on why Microsoft is being so quiet about Project Scarlett, and why we’ve not seen any pictures of dev kits yet. Check the Tweet out below and read on for more details.
hardly anyone has them, and they’re nowhere near final. That’s why you’re hearing a lot of nonsense about them not being powerful etc. Microsoft wants to surprise Sony this time
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) November 30, 2019
As you can see, those Project Scarlett dev kits are definitely out there, they’re just being kept quiet. It’s clear that Microsoft wants to surprise fans and Sony with what they’ve got, but how does that work with the process of creating games for the console?
First-Party Developers
Project Scarlett needs to launch with some amazing games, just like the PlayStation 5 does. In order to do that, Sony and Microsoft will have their best developers, the first-party developers, working on those games. For Microsoft this means something very different now to what it did when the Xbox One launched.
The PlayStation 4 launched with some phenomenal first party games, but the Xbox One felt like it never really got going. As a result, the PlayStation 4 has been the dominant console of this generation, something that’s backed up by sales figures.
Microsoft has been heavily investing in new studios for a couple of years now, with the sole intent of having those studios create first-party games for their console. I’d say that the company has achieved a lot with these new studios, including powerhouse developers like Obsidian Entertainment, who recently released The Outer Worlds.
Project Scarlett dev kits must be with all of these studios, but because they’re first-party studios, Microsoft can probably tell them to not post pictures of the kits, or share any details about them. This has created a lot of animosity around the next generation console, because the specs are a complete mystery.
I think that Microsoft may surprise us with Project Scarlett, and I think it might be a lot more powerful than the PlayStation 5 is going to be. Microsoft are determined with this next generation, and I think that the energy they’re putting into Project Scarlett is going to blow us all away.