The gaming industry has a lot of ebb and flow to it. For instance, over the last twenty years or so we’ve seen industry leaders who dominated for one generation or more, stumble and miscalculate at launch to fall behind competition. Microsoft was victim to this with the Xbox One when they gambled poorly on both the price people were willing to pay as well the viability of the Kinect device. It allowed Sony to take back that number 1 slot. Though Microsoft has adjusted their approach to gaming significantly, have they at least learned from their mistakes? Well, only time will tell, but at least one person thinks they have a big advantage.
In an interview with Gamesradar, Xbox Game Studios Head Matt Booty said that Scarlett is going to have an advantage in the way in which Microsoft has integrated their legacy software into the overall brand, making it easier for developers to port games as well as reassure consumers of coming content.
“We want – when you invest in Xbox – to know that you’re bringing that legacy content library with you. It’s why we think we’ve got an advantage with Project Scarlett, because our goal is that any game that runs on an Xbox One will run on Scarlett. You’re not porting to a different operating system; you’re not porting to a different graphics API; you’re just running an Xbox game, right? So we hope that that’s a big advantage in terms of our initial content library.”
We still don’t know the nuts and bolts of a lot what next gen consoles will be like, even if we’ve gotten decent amount of information about what will be under the hood. Exciting times, and the best of times for all of you who love to console war in the comments.