From a rather massive article on Engadget, showcasing the making of Microsoft’s newly announced Xbox One, comes a most interesting snippet – that Microsoft purposefully didn’t target the “highest end graphics” when building the console.
It’s in the video, so you’ll have to sit through a 20 second Windows 8 advert before you can skip to the bit (about 5:40), but it’s there. “We purposefully did not target the highest end graphics. We targeted it more as a broad entertainment player.”
Picked up by GAF, it’s a strange claim to make in a promotional piece, and whilst that way of thinking worked for Nintendo with the original Wii, up against the way Sony are marketing the PS4 as a real powerhouse it’s a baffling quote.
Note that nobody’s claiming that the PS4 is technically better, just the choice of words.
No doubt the console is capable of great things – visually too – but from what we’ve seen today (and echoed around the internet) perhaps Microsoft’s new console is going to have to flex its muscles a little harder than some thought before the conference kicked off.
We’ll know come E3, when we’ll get chance to test the games first hand.
“It appeared that there had even been demonstrations to thank Big Brother for raising the chocolate ration to twenty grams a week. And only yesterday, he reflected, it had been announced that the ration was to be reduced to twenty grams a week. Was it possible that they could swallow that, after only twenty-four hours? Yes, they swallowed it.”
- George Orwell, ‘1984’
