Game developers have been quoted as saying the PlayStation 4 is “50% faster” than the Xbox One, and that they will be forced to “castrate” the PS4 versions of multi-platform releases if the Xbox One is not to be utterly humiliated.
An article in Edge quotes “multiple high-level game development sources” as being emphatic that the PS4 is as much as 50% faster than its benighted Xbox One “rival”:
Our contacts have told us that memory reads on PS4 are 40-50 per cent quicker than Xbox One, and its ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) is around 50 per cent faster.
One basic example we were given suggested that without optimisation 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.
[…]
Sony and Microsoft are each still working on the graphics drivers for each console, and Xbox One is lagging behind in this regard – Microsoft “has been late on their drivers and that has been hurting them,” said one source.
Another described Xbox One’s graphics drivers less charitably as “horrible”. Both consoles’ graphics drivers will continue to improve right up to – and beyond – launch, which will even up the difference in performance a little.
Also of interest are claims the yawning gulf in performance will lead to publishers hobbling multi-platform PS4 releases so the Xbox One version does not look too awful in comparison:
One source even suggested that enforcing parity across consoles could become a political issue between platform holders, developers and publishers.
They said that it could damage perceptions of a cross platform title, not to mention Xbox One, if the PS4 version shipped with an obviously superior resolution and framerate; better to “castrate” the PS4 version and release near-identical games to avoid ruffling any feathers.
This claim was later countered by a contact at a different studio. “It would be totally fine for us to make one version prettier without any political difficulties but it usually doesn’t make financial sense,” they said, “unless it’s a very simple tweak.”
An idea for a solution, dunno if it would work:
Develop the game for XBone first, then ask Sony if they’re willing to pay more to improve it for the PS4. That way developers are paid more for more work and Microsoft can’t complain because the advantage was paid for. If not, we get a mirror version of the game and can’t complain since Sony decided it was not worth the money.
Win-win for everyone but the gamers at least?
Sources* lol…
One wonders at exactly who these developers are to say this, when it has also been reported that having 50% more GPU cores does NOT translate into 50% better graphics or “speed”
Eurogamer has a good article on this subject
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-can-xbox-one-multi-platform-games-compete-with-ps4
I welcome the fact that Sony has finally done right by us in terms of hardware! I was disappointed when PS3’s specs looked better than 360 on paper but were a bit crap in reality!
I like to know about the competition though and even though PS4 is definitely more powerful, I am still cautious over the XBone’s architecture like the GPU compute cores and dedicated audio silicon, which make the CPU much more effective.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens once they’re both out!
In the meantime, even as a PS fan, I’m getting a bit tired of the negative spin Sankaku seems to put on every article about Xbox :/ Surely we are all gamers at heart?
>Surely we are all gamers at heart?
I don’t believe so. I buy all systems eventually when they have enough games I want to play. But if someone says they “won’t” get a system because of it being weaker than the other… I guess playing games is less important than what they look like.
And wait and see is correct. Once both systems have been out for a while the developers will tell us how they are, after having /worked/ with them. Right now we’re still guessing.
“XBox ONE” isn’t the name retarded enough to keep people away from it? everybody who can count to three should understand… even chickens can, probably.
Buy the system that plays the games you want. The end.