Xbox Scorpio vs. PS4 Pro -- Microsoft Discusses Its Big Power Advantage

Now that Sony has officially announced the PlayStation 4 Pro and detailed its specs, it's possible to compare this system against Microsoft's Project Scorpio. As it relates to performance, the PS4 Pro's GPU will offer 4.2 teraflops of computing power, which compares to 6 teraflops for Scorpio.

This makes Scorpio around 43 percent more powerful when looking at that metric alone. In a new interview with Polygon, Xbox director Albert Penello said Scorpio's performance advantage over PS4 Pro will be "obvious."

As such, Penello said he's not too worried about the fact that the PS4 Pro will have a one-year headstart on Scorpio. Penello declined to share a more specific release date for the device than "holiday 2017." Another big unknown is the price; Microsoft has said people should think of Xbox Scorpio as a "premium product," though it remains to be seen what means in terms of a price point.

"We know it's important to deliver an experience that demonstrates the power gap between [the PS4 Pro and Scorpio] at a price that makes sense to console gamers," Penello said.

Microsoft has time and again referred to Scorpio as the "most powerful console ever made," so a premium price point is expected.

Interestingly, Xbox boss Phil Spencer said in June that Microsoft could have released a new, more powerful Xbox One this year. However, the company decided against it because it wanted to wait until it could deliver "true" 4K gaming with six teraflops of performance.

Also in the interview, Penello was asked if Microsoft could release a firmware update for the standard Xbox One that would introduce 4K and HDR support as Sony is doing with all PS4 models. He said it's too soon to say. "Until I know more about how they're doing it, I can't speak to whether or not we can offer something similar," he explained.

As announced at Sony's PlayStation Meeting, a firmware update for all PS4 models--dating back to launch in November 2013--will add HDR and 4K support. This is currently available with the Xbox One S, but not earlier models.

Read the full Polygon interview here.

For more on this week's PlayStation news, check out our roundup of all the big news.