---
title: "Next-gen consoles are coming. What does it mean for the web?"
date: 2019-10-30
url: https://remiam.co.uk/notes/next-gen-consoles-and-the-web
tags: [Gaming, Browsers, Web, TV]
read_time_minutes: 8
description: "PS5 and Xbox Series X announcements and what next-gen console browsers mean for web builders, web games, and brand experiences on the living-room TV."
---

# Next-gen consoles are coming. What does it mean for the web?

*Published 2019-10-30 · 8 min read · by Liam (Remiam)*

Sony and Microsoft have shown the PS5 and Xbox Series X. The hardware is impressive, but what we keep thinking about is the browser running on it. The living-room screen is about to become a real web target — and almost no brand site is ready.

Sony's revealed the PS5 specs. Microsoft has shown Project Scarlett, now Xbox Series X. The hardware story is obvious — more frames, more rays, more storage speed. The story we keep thinking about is the browser running on those boxes. Both consoles ship with a real web browser, both connect to TVs that are now the largest screens in most homes, and almost no brand site we've audited renders well on either.

## Console specs, briefly

|  | PS5 (announced) | Xbox Series X (announced) |
| --- | --- | --- |
| CPU | Custom AMD Zen 2, 8-core | Custom AMD Zen 2, 8-core |
| GPU | Custom AMD RDNA, ~10 TFLOPS | Custom AMD RDNA 2, 12 TFLOPS |
| Memory | GDDR6, exact spec TBD | 16GB GDDR6 |
| Storage | Custom NVMe SSD | 1TB NVMe SSD |
| Ray tracing | Hardware-accelerated | Hardware-accelerated |
| Target launch | Holiday 2020 | Holiday 2020 |

*Next-gen console specs as announced, late 2019.*

## Why the console browser matters

- Tens of millions of TVs with a real browser, a real GPU, and a real input device. That's a category most product teams have ignored entirely.
- Activation campaigns built for that screen — voting overlays, second-screen experiences, social tie-ins — are wide open.
- Web games are about to be playable on hardware that absolutely will not flinch. WebGL 2 on a PS5 GPU is genuinely impressive.
- Console browsers are increasingly Chromium-based. The fragmentation tax is lower than it has been.
- TV-shaped surfaces matter for brand experiences — connected events, live shopping, voting overlays.

## Where we'd start

- Test your sites on the current PS4 / Xbox One browsers. If they look bad now, they'll look bad on the new ones too.
- Design for controller input. Hover states matter again — keyboard navigation matters more.
- Think 10-foot UI. Anything below 18px font-size on a TV is unreadable from the sofa.
- Test gamepad navigation with the Gamepad API. It's been stable in major browsers since 2015 and nobody uses it.
- Build colour-safe — TVs have very different gamma curves than monitors; subtle low-contrast UI disappears.

> The 'living-room browser' is becoming a real category. The brand experiences that ship to TVs in 2021 will be the ones whose teams test on console in 2020. Everyone else will be retrofitting.

## What we will not predict

- A flood of console-first websites. There is no business model.
- Brand sites suddenly redesigning for 10-foot UI. The audience doesn't justify it for most.
- Web games taking meaningful market share from native console games. WebGL is impressive; native game tooling is still a generation ahead.
- The console browser becoming a primary entry point to brand experiences. The TV browser remains a secondary surface for the foreseeable.

## What we will predict

- 'Living-room browser' becomes a real testing target for any brand experience that wants to be on every screen.
- Event-tied second-screen experiences — vote in the TV browser, see the result in the show — return as a category.
- Streaming overlays and channel companion sites get serious about 10-foot rendering.
- Big-brand campaigns start budgeting console-browser QA as a line item. Worth budgeting for it on big-brand projects starting in 2020.

We're not predicting a flood of console-first sites. We are predicting a quiet shift where 'living-room browser' becomes a real testing target for any brand experience that wants to be on every screen. The brands that take it seriously early will have measurably better viewer experiences when next-gen consoles land in twelve months.

## References

1. [PlayStation 5 — official specifications](https://www.playstation.com/en-gb/ps5/)
2. [Xbox Series X — official site](https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/consoles/xbox-series-x)
3. [Gamepad API — MDN documentation](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Gamepad_API)