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This is how Microsoft execs reacted to Sony’s PS5 announcement and the price hike. Internal emails show Microsoft listing the PS5's strengths and weaknesses and how it considered reacting to the PS5 price increases. Details here: https://t.co/WylgEI4zsg
— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) September 18, 2023
The emails show Liz Hamren, former head of platform engineering and hardware at Xbox, pointing out the strengths and weaknesses of Sony’s PS5 specs compared to Microsoft’s Xbox Series X. PlayStation hardware lead Mark Cerny detailed the PS5 specs just two days before Microsoft publicly announced its own Xbox Series X specs.
Hamren lists the variable GPU and CPU clock rates of the PS5, “versus us running at higher sustained rates.” Hamren admits Sony has a clear advantage on SSD performance with the PS5:
Elsewhere, the 12 teraflops of performance versus Sony’s 10 teraflops was also briefly discussed. “[Cerny] emphasized that GPU teraflops and CU is not a good measurement of performance. We made this same point with Digital Foundry, but we do have a clear performance advantage (12 v 10),” wrote Hamren.
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In internal emails, Microsoft was also quick to react to Sony’s PS5 price increase last year — despite not hiking Xbox prices immediately. Xbox CFO Tim Stuart emailed Xbox chief Spencer and Microsoft CFO Amy Hood early in the morning of Sony’s announcement in 2022, noting that the Xbox team had “anticipated this and are moving quickly toward a plan now that we’ve seen confirmation.”
There’s a discussion in the email chain, which is heavily redacted, but it appears that Spencer wants the company to remain gamer-focused with any price increases. Ami Silverman, who at the time was head of Microsoft’s consumer sales and marketing, responds with “all good points, let’s be gamer obsessed here as we have not gotten out of the woods... we know this could be our time to win fans vs lose being a follower.”
Silverman is clearly referring to Xbox sales being behind PlayStation ones and not wanting to lose any momentum by immediately following Sony’s price hike with Microsoft’s own increase in Xbox prices. Microsoft repeatedly mentioned losing the console wars and being in a distant third place during the FTC v. Microsoft hearing.
