Xbox Chief Explains the “Physics” Behind the Design of Sony’s PlayStation 5

Right after Sony unveiled the design of its upcoming PlayStation 5, it became an instant meme on various social media platforms. However, according to the Xbox chief, the designs of these types of high-end gaming consoles are not for aesthetics only. Many factors come into play when it comes to designing a gaming console.

The Executive VP of Gaming at Microsoft, Phil Spencer recently made an appearance in the first-of-its-kind in-game talk show, Animal Talking, hosted by video-game journalist, Gary Whitta. It is the same show in which we recently saw Disney star, Selena Gomez perform her latest song.

At one point in the interview, Gary asked spencer about his first impression when he saw the design of the PlayStation 5. So, Spencer explained that choosing a design for a gaming console and that too for so high-powered ones like their Xbox Series X or Sony’s PlayStation 5 can become a tedious task. Many factors like cooling, energy consumption, and performance come into play about which the designers have to think.

“Well, it’s hard, because I know the physics that we’re both dealing with with the power of these consoles, and cooling these consoles — the power, the energy use, the cooling — those are real challenges of this generation.”, said Spencer.

Talking about Microsoft’s Xbox design, Phil explained, “We chose our design because we wanted a large fan that we could spin a little more slowly so we’re not making noise. We wanted to have a very quiet console.”.

Coming to the design of the PlayStation 5, Spencer added “Knowing that the PlayStation 5 is running at higher clocks […] it creates unique design challenges in how you keep these things cool. They took an approach that’s different than the approach that we did [with Xbox Series X]. I haven’t been around a PlayStation 5 running, but I am sure that they had similar design goals for themselves around what it means to run, how it sounds, and how much power it’s drawing because those are things that we focused on and it led to the design that we have.”

You can check out the full 2-and-a-half hour episode of “Animal Talking” right below.