Xbox Series X audio will be very competitive with PS5

Despite the recent PlayStation 5 reveal focusing heavily on its incorporation of HRTF-based 3D audio, Microsoft has barely touched on how it is handling Xbox Series X audio for the next-generation of consoles. 

While it was previously revealed by developers at Ninja Theory that Xbox Series X audio would be handled by bespoke internal hardware, Microsoft has only revealed that the system will have 3D audio capabilities.

However, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X audio solution will indeed be handled by the company’s long-in-development Project Acoustics, spatial audio backend that the company has been perfecting for a decade.

"Spatial Audio" also began in Microsoft research several years ago, incubating. And is HRTF sampling, and has finally made it out into Xbox Series X pic.twitter.com/2tXhYDcXn2

— Jose Fajardo ?? (moneymaker.neo) (@josefajardo) April 5, 2020

Much like PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X audio solution will use HRTF to perfectly replicate 3D audio to players. With bespoke custom audio hardware inside the console, developers won’t have to worry about offloading heavy audio processing onto the system’s CPU.

With PlayStation 5’s Tempest Engine audio solution being touted as a killer feature for Sony’s next-generation console, it looks like Microsoft has already broken even.

For more news on Xbox Series X vs PlayStation 5, check out our specs comparison here.