The Xbox Series X and PS5 designs have received considerable criticism in recent weeks, but were always going to be a tough design challenge; the problem with pushing 4K and 60fps is that the hardware generates so much heat that the new consoles will be PS3 The idea that the new console will be of Slim proportions is just a fantasy.

Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that Xbox boss Phil Spencer was quite complimentary of what the Sony team has accomplished with the PS5 design. In an interview conducted at a neutral location, the island of Animal Crossing, Spencer expressed empathy for the challenges faced by Sony's engineers.

"It's difficult because I know the physics that we're both dealing with in terms of these consoles," Spencer told host Gary Whitta around the 40-minute mark of the following video.

"Cooling the console, the use of power and energy, is a real challenge in this generation, because a console with a CPU and a GPU is essentially a powerful computer.

"We chose this design because we wanted the large fan to spin a little more slowly and not make as much noise.

"We designed it so that the shape follows the function, so that a large fan rotating a little slower can suck in a lot of air without the high-pitched whine that is common in consoles." [Sony, on the other hand, has taken a different approach: while the Xbox Series X has 52 1.825 GHz computing units, the PS5 has only 36. It is assumed that this is why the early development units had a large central grille to draw air in.

"Knowing that the PlayStation 5 is running at a higher clock, more [heat] is generated." Spencer continued. 'I like the design they've done. I have a lot of respect for what the team has done with PlayStation. But they are making the box work in a different way than we do, which creates unique design challenges in terms of how to cool these things"

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One thing the two consoles have in common is size. As the pictures below (based on the relative sizes of the disk drives and USB ports) show, both are huge.

Every PlayStation to date has eventually been slimmed down, but it does not happen overnight. The original PlayStation took six years to downsize, while the PS2 took two years less, four years; both the PS3 and PS4 had slimmer models released three years after the original was released.

In short, as Spencer told Whitta, "Hardware is hard.

"You're betting on technology that hasn't yet been produced by AMD's partners.

"It's like throwing a lawn dart 100 yards and hoping it hits a target that hasn't been drawn yet."