Last week, Microsoft’s product planning manager Albert Penello called Xbox One and PS4 specs “meaningless” because people only care about a format’s games, much the annoyance of some gamers who like to know what each unit is capable of. He has now shed some light on what he meant.

First, you can check up on Penello’s original statement here.

Posting on this NeoGAF thread, Penello said, “I appreciate those who understand the point I was trying to get across. It’s always hard, after sitting doing interviews all day, and you’re trying to have an engaging conversation with someone, and words get pulled out our the tone what you’re trying to say didn’t come out how you meant it.

“You should also understand this interview was done after our launch event, and prior to E3. So please take that into consideration.

“I’m not diminishing Sony’s performance claims and I wasn’t trying to be arrogant or dismissive. What I was trying to say is – I’m not Sony’s engineering team. So I can’t comment on what they have published as specs. I know what our teams are doing, and I know how they thought about architecting the system.

“The guys who are building these machines (on both sides) are unbelievably talented and experts in their field. Nobody knows the specifics of how the machines are architected or if there may be bottlenecks in one system or accelerators in another that change the impact of the published specs.”

Penello then reiterated his stance that the quality of a format’s games should come before a system’s raw technical specs, “What I believe is that our games are going to be great and they are going to look next-gen, and I *think* E3 sort of showed that. And great games are what matters. And while you guys joke about the cloud stuff, I think the stuff the Respawn guys have said starts to clear up what we’ve been talking about with cloud performance (cue the “have you seen Titanfall” meme)

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“Games on both systems looked awesome. I was there, and while I know RISE took a hit on the gameplay that was shown, I thought it was the most next-gen looking game I saw on either platform. Of course, I get I’m biased and I didn’t have time to see everything.

“As always, I love taking the hits. And I appreciate that while the words I used may were probably worth some scrutiny, I do appreciate that some of you got what I was trying to say.”

What do you think of Penello’s openness to his critics? Are tech specs meaningless in the long-term, or do you disagree?

Let us know below.

Thanks OXM.