As we near the month of November, the tension between Microsoft and Sony is reaching an all-time high. "PlayStation 4 vs. Xbox One" has become a huge topic of debate, resulting in a number of gamers and industry insiders alike debating as to which next-gen console will be the most powerful and whether or not the disparity between the two will make a difference in the long run.
Edge spoke with a number of "high-level game development sources" on this point of contention and the general consensus is that PlayStation 4 has a clear technical advantage over Xbox One. Not only that but PS4's edge is apparently both "significant" and "obvious," with both memory reads and the Arithmetic Logic Unit being around 50 percent faster than the competition.
One basic example we were given suggested that without optimization for either console, a platform-agnostic development build can run at around 30FPS in 1920×1080 on PS4, but it’ll run at “20-something” FPS in 1600×900 on Xbox One. “Xbox One is weaker and it’s a pain to use its ESRAM,” concluded one developer.
Apparently even Microsoft's efforts to improve the clock speed of its GPU aren't going to help the hardware all that much either, as one source noted: "The clock speed update is not significant, it does not change things that much. Of course, something is better than nothing."
Do you think PlayStation 4's technical advantages will play a major role in differentiating the two platforms in the end? Are gamers and developers just splitting hairs? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
[Edge]
