During a recent interview with MCV, Albert Penello, Senior Director of Product Management at Microsoft, said he was “as surprised as anybody else was” when Sony introduced PlayStation 4 Pro.
Apparently, Microsoft was not aware of Sony’s plans (and vice versa), which is why Xbox One X is not to be considered as a direct response to the arrival of PlayStation 4 Pro: the new console of Redmond had become a concrete idea for several years now.
“I give them a lot of credit for what they did there but for me, the most interesting observation is that we both arrived at a similar idea even if the execution is slightly different,” Penello said in the interview.
“This business tends to diverge and converge in interesting ways, and obviously we don’t know what they’re doing. We don’t have insight into what their plans are, so when they announced the Pro, I was as surprised as anybody else was,” Penello stated.
“They had a different idea in mind for what they wanted to build, so in retrospect it may seem like we were reacting to what they were doing. But people in the business know that this has been in the works for years, and we have to lock the specs years in advance,” the executive further explained.
Microsoft – according to Penello – has seen the imminent transition to 4K, and that’s why they decided to create a machine that could support that resolution internally.