Recently Edge Online published a story about the PlayStation 4 being 50 % more powerful than the Xbox One, due to memory speeds and ALU capabilities. Well, first of all I would be cautious to believe these allegations since all of their sources are “Anonymous” which is a pretty large grain of salt to me.
However, if – and that’s a big if – the PlayStation 4 somehow is 50 percent faster than the Xbox One, what does it mean for consumers like you and me who will be faced with having to make a purchase decision?
I believe it truly comes down to the platform exclusive games. While multiplatform titles like Watch Dogs, Assassin’s Creed IV, Call of Duty Ghosts and more will likely have parity between both consoles, the exclusive games will make the difference. We can look at the previous generation for context.
FIFA, Battlefield and Call of Duty look pretty much the same now and the differences are negligible if anything. The only time we can really point to some major differences is when we look at console exclusives like The Last of Us, Uncharted – both on the – PS3 as well as Halo and Gears on the Xbox 360.
Many opinions tend to steer towards the PS3 as having the better looking games, including myself, but the Xbox 360 titles aren’t too far behind. In any event, the point is, the majority of the games are multiplatform and therefor will likely look the same on PS4 and Xbox One, once again.
It will be more than just graphics that make the difference.
In this generation of consoles we care about more than just the frame rate or resolution, more important will be the creativity of the games we play, how we interact with each other and maybe most importantly, how developers use the console specific features like the PlayStation 4 controller’s touch pad and Xbox One’s Kinect 2.0 for example.
In large I am well over petty arguments about power and shader performance arguments or which console has the faster processor. These arguments light up the message boards and have raging fanboys get their panties in a bunch.
We will know if there is a difference in capabilities in a year or two once developers are familiar with the hardware and have a few games under their belts.
