PlayStation or Xbox? It's a question that consumers have debated for quite some time now. Without much to go on, rumours and leaks have already attempted to compare both the PS5 and Project Scarlett, but Microsoft believes its next-gen console will have at least one major advantage over its rival.
In the current generation of consoles, Xbox One had one big feature that tilted the scales in its favour when compared to Sony's PS4 and that is backwards compatibility.
No further word from Sony on PS5's backwards compatibility
Now we know that Sony also intends to bring backwards compatibility to the PS5, but it's not clear how this feature will work. For instance, we don't know if the next-gen console will support all PS4 titles or just the popular ones. There's no clarity over whether games belonging to earlier PlayStation consoles will be compatible with the PS5.
We don't know these specific details because Sony hasn't said a single word about the feature yet. Microsoft, on the other hand, has been slightly more forthcoming about backwards compatibility on Project Scarlett.
Microsoft's biggest strength
Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, believes that the feature will once again work in Project Scarlett's favour when it goes head-to-head with Sony's PS5 next year.
"We want – when you invest in Xbox – to know that you're bringing that legacy content library with you," Booty in an interview to GamesRadar.
"It's why we think we've got an advantage with Project Scarlett because our goal is that any game that runs on an Xbox One will run on Scarlett. You're not porting to a different operating system; you're not porting to a different graphics API; you're just running an Xbox game, right? So we hope that that's a big advantage in terms of our initial content library."
Of course, it remains to be seen whether the Project Scarlett will outshine the PS5 with this feature alone but Booty seems confident. Again though, it's hard to know this for sure with Sony maintaining silence on the PS5's backwards compatibility capabilities.
PlayStation users will be hopeful that the PS5 comes with complete backwards compatibility at least with the PS4. Not being compatible with previous generations or only being compatible with select games from earlier consoles is certainly easier to forgive than the PS5 not having full backwards compatibility with the PS4.
