Sony's PlayStation 5 specs teaser offers a glimpse at the power Xbox needs to beat

A few months ago, Sony announced that it wasn't holding an E3 2019 media briefing. Instead, the company will host its own event at the end of the year to discuss upcoming games and possibly the PlayStation 5 (PS5). However, if you can't wait that long, Mark Cerny recently revealed new details about the upcoming console. In an exclusive interview with Wired, the executive talked about what type of processor, graphics card, hard drive, and more would be in the machine.

The PS5 will have the following specifications.

8-core AMD Ryzen CPU based on 7nm Zen 2
AMD Radeon Navi GPU
PS5 supports ray tracing
Supports 8K resolution for future displays
Backward compatible with PlayStation 4 (PS4) games
Contains a disc drive for physical copies
Features a solid state drive

It's great to see to see that the PS5 will be a powerful machine, however, only time will tell how that translates into game quality. It's definitely an exciting time to be a gamer. It's worth noting that Cerny stressed that this device wasn't coming in 2019, it may launch next year or even after that.

Eyes will be on Microsoft to either match, or exceed the PS5's specifications when it reveals the next-gen Xbox "Scarlett" consoles, probably at E3 2019. While Sony's strategy seems to indicate one device, Xbox Scarlett is rumored to be two consoles. Xbox "Lockhart" will be the entry-level model, while the Xbox "Anaconda" will be the more-powerful (more-expensive) successor to the Xbox One X, which is currently the most powerful console in the world.

In order to avoid the mistakes Microsoft made with the original Xbox One — namely its lack of power when compared to the PS4 — Xbox Anaconda has to be much more powerful than the PS5. It's unclear if that's the case at the moment.