It actually wouldn't surprise me if MS has better hardware every step of the way from here on out.
I think the big take away (rightly or wrongly) that MS learned this generation is that XBox cannot be inferior hardware wise to the Playstation or they will lose big. And you can see that in the Scorpio unveiling, they emphasized over and over again that it's the most powerful gaming home console.
The original XBox benefitted by being better than the PS2. The 360 was better than the PS3 in many ways and launched a full year earlier.
MS cannot expect things to go their way if they offer inferior hardware, the role of the XBox is to the better hardware option to whatever the Playstation is.
With Scorpio they are getting back to that, and they will likely do the same thing versus Playstation 5. If Playstation is the defacto console brand, then the role of the XBox has to be to be better than that at least hardware wise otherwise it won't be competetive.
MS *must* have the power advantage, otherwise what's the point? They're basically making a Microsoft Playstation with worse specs and no one wants that. MS learned that the hard way with XBox One.
