"Microsoft has teased Project Scorpio for being called as ""the most powerful gaming console ever"", by the Xbox’s boss Phil Spencer. However, Sony has recently pulled a 4K HDR console, PS4 Pro, and it will be available from Thursday 10 November (are we talking about today? Oh yeah! Drumrolls!).

As the Scorpio still has a year to get launched, we thought it would be useful to look at both the consoles.

• The Graphics

The most notable specification of both the consoles is that they offer 4K HDR gaming. Xbox in its press conference at E3 2016 promised quite a lot of features, and it claims that the graphics chip in the upcoming console will be more advanced. The new console will be capable of delivering 4K resolutions at 60 frames per second to boot. The Project Scorpio system on the chip will have six teraflops of computing power just to render 4K graphics, which puts it in a high-end PC graphics card category.

The PS4 Pro has 4.20 teraflops of graphics processing power, using an AMD Radeon-based GPU. This makes it extremely powerful and capable of rendering games in 4K and that too, with High Dynamic Range (HDR) color and contrast processing. When running in native 2160p, they stick to at least 30fps.

• CPU and memory

During the reveal of Scorpio, Microsoft confirmed that it would have an octa-core processor, the PS4 Pro contains an octa-core CPU, the x86-64 ""Jaguar"", and it runs at 2.1 GHz.

It is expected that just like PS4, Scorpio will offer 8GB of GDDR5 RAM but Microsoft has not yet confirmed this. The memory supported by the project Scorpio will have a bandwidth of 320 GB/s, while Pro has a bandwidth of 218GB/s. This does not affect the general gaming much. The higher spec enables more developers to explore out of it in the future and aids to better the console experience.

• Virtual Reality

Sony is already in the Virtual Reality space with its OSVR headset. Microsoft delights in offering the better experience of VR in its Scorpio. Microsoft claims it to be running better, higher resolution VR offerings.

It is thought that Microsoft will ally with Oculus for getting Rift support. The Rift support is a better specifications headset than PSVR. The PlayStation VR uses a single 1920 x 1080 OLED panel to serve 960 x 1080, while the Oculus Rift has the resolution of 2160 x 1200, which makes it serve 1080 to each eye.

It is vital while playing games that how much resolution they offer. The two hunks, Rift and Vive are capable of running at 90 Hz while the PSVR can output up to 120 Hz.

One of the reasons to upgrade, in terms of the PS4 Pro is to serve a better virtual reality experience. Even if there is no update available to PSVR next year, the developers are still being urged to present deeper and more detailed insight for Sony's headset running Pro owners. The VR can be served as a significant battleground for both manufacturers.

• Price and Release date

The release date of PS4 Pro of Sony is 10 November 2016. The Project Scorpio, on the other hand, will be released on ""Holiday 2017"", thus PS4 will be released 12 months before it. The PS4 Pro has thus, the upper hand when it comes to price as PS4 Pro costs £349. This is quite amazing as Sony has managed to squeeze down its cost to make its market-leading console as affordable as possible.

Perhaps, that will also compel Microsoft to price its machine as smartly. But as it is going to be higher spec'ed piece, so it may not be as affordable. Nevertheless, where there is hope, there is life, so Paklap.pk continues to hope for the best.

• Backwards Compatibility

To answer the query of current-gen console owners, both manufacturers have stated that the new consoles are better and more immersive, but all games with upcoming releases will be compatible with the standard consoles too. The users irrespective of at it scales their graphic card, can still all buy and enjoy the same games. The graphics quality of the game, however, will be in accordance with the console they own."