In the article, Microsoft congratulated AMD on the announcement, but also said something more interesting: the company emphasized that the Xbox Series S and X consoles are the only next-generation consoles that fully support the AMD RDNA 2 architecture. In other words, there was a clear hint of inferiority in this respect Sony PlayStation 5:

“We here on the Xbox team would like to congratulate our wonderful partners at AMD on today’s announcement of the Radeon RX 6000 Series RDNA 2 GPUs. … The long-term strategic relationship between Xbox and AMD over the last 15 years, starting with the Xbox 360, has based on Xbox Series X and S. With the upcoming launch of new consoles on November 10, based on the latest AMD Zen 2 and RDNA 2 architectures, we will introduce the next generation of games, delivering levels of power, performance and compatibility never saw before in consoles.

Xbox Series X and S are the only next-gen consoles with full hardware support for all the RDNA 2 capabilities that AMD has demonstrated today. … Early in the development of the Xbox Series X and S, we knew we were laying the foundation for the next decade of gaming innovation and performance on consoles, PCs, and the cloud. To realize this vision, from day one, we wanted to use the full power of RDNA 2 in our hardware. Thanks to the close collaboration and partnership between Xbox and AMDNot only did we deliver on that promise, but we went even further with additional next-generation innovations such as hardware-accelerated machine learning capabilities to improve NPC intelligence, more realistic animations, and improved image quality through technologies such as machine learning-based super-resolution.

In an effort to put the interests of gamers and developers first, we decided to wait for the most advanced technologies from our partners at AMD before finalizing our architecture. Now, with the upcoming release of the Xbox Series X and S and the new AMD Radeon RX 6000 series GPUs, developers have a common set of next-generation productivity tools and capabilities to enable them to create innovative gaming experiences on both consoles and PCs. ”

The article does not specify which RDNA 2 features will only be available on next-generation Microsoft consoles. However, one can speculate a little: it is known that Sony, for example, never mentioned using something like Variable Rate Shading (VRS) in the PlayStation 5. On the other hand, the Japanese company may simply have created its own solution instead of using standard functionality from AMD.