Microsoft Disputes PS4 Power Advantage

[shrekfan246]

So yeah, when exactly wasn't this industry "all about power?"

I dunno, but I'd be interested in seeing that theoretical point in time.

Hell, even when the console manufacturers don't make it about power, the customers do. At least, that's the only explanation I can give for why "Console X is more/less powerful than Consoles Y and Z" topics tend to devolve into PC vs. Console arguments, because obviously "if you cared about power you'd just be buying a PC".

 

[faefrost]

But Fantasy Football on GDDR5? Who can be against that.. I guess it will now be stuck on DDR3

I doubt most of the fantasy football crowd knows a stick of RAM from a stick of gum.

I mean, their loss. I hear fantasy football runs 43% smoother for GDDR5....

Developers will not even bother "optimizing the graphics" this generation. In prior generations developers had to create actual true hardware specific ports for their games. So a game developed for one platform may not always have ported well onto the other. But this generation the base hardware platform is the same. And it's a PC. The differences between them are marginal hardware differences you see between differently built pc's. developers will make the game for the base x86 platform. The only thing they are going to bother porting or tweaking will be that little bit needed to run the game under Xbone's Windows OS or PS4's more Linux based one. Unless MS or Sony are paying them for a true console exclusive no one is going to bother making any use of the hardware differences between the two consoles, ever. And that includes coding for the idiotic Kinect.

The games will look and perform virtually the same on either console this generation. The only time this will ever come up will be something that takes a ton of available RAM for keeping a massive data set in memory at once, such as Skyrim. So the PS4 may be better for something like Skyrim. Otherwise, no real difference at all.

Haven't we had developers say just the opposite? That they're all PCs, but that doesn't mean they'll play well together?

Besides, they're going to need optimsation eventually. 8GB is a decent amount of RAM now, but in 5 years? Remember, this is a console. A closed system. No upgrades to RAM, processer, etc. I can drop in new RAM on my PC, or swap out the CPU, GPU, or even the motherboard if I have to. The Xbone can't even add internal HDD space.

Yeah, optimisation will be an issue, even if it isn't day one.

Well yes. I think I was unclear. Of course they will be optimizing the games and the code. But they will mainly be optimizing it for the lowest common denominator. And then not really going back and re optimizing it for the more powerful hardware. This isn't like the PS3's bloody cell processor where each platform needed to be completely redone. They typically will not be trying to squeeze just that much more out of the PS4 then they will get from the XBox One. At least not until very very late in this consoles life cycle. Why would a developer typically waste a couple of 100 man hours trying to get an almost marginal performance boost out of the PS4 hardware over a XB1? In previous generations they had to do this wholesale just to move between platforms. But with these? They will do some. But nowhere near what they have traditionally been doing.

 

[Dragonbums]

Microsoft's Albert Penello believes the technical details of the PS4 and Xbox One are irrelevant as long as they produce equivalent experiences.

Personally, I agree with that sentiment.
Sadly that is a viewpoint slowly dying off in the game industry today.

Today?

Surely you mean "since 1988 when Sega did what Nintendon't"?

The industry has been "all about power" for a long time.

That said, I agree with the sentiment that the technical details of these consoles aren't so drastically different that they should actually impact someone's purchasing decision.

Well for me I didn't exist at the time so this is as far back as I can remember and as a kid, obviously I only cared about games.
I mean, I didn't even know what a hardware was.

 

[Dragonbums]

Today?

Surely you mean "since 1988 when Sega did what Nintendon't"?

The industry has been "all about power" for a long time.

That said, I agree with the sentiment that the technical details of these consoles aren't so drastically different that they should actually impact someone's purchasing decision.

Nintendo was boasting about the power of the NES over competitors earlier than that, too. And let's not forget power was somewhat of a factor in the 1983 crash gamers keep comparing this day and age to, because consoles were having trouble keeping up with PC capacities even then.

So yeah, when exactly wasn't this industry "all about power?"

Back then though power made a superb difference in graphical capabilities.
Now however, as we get closer and closer to the ever looming graphical fidelity it will only start to matter to a small range of people.

Honestly, this generation I will see a very small differences in graphical capability between the Wii U, Xbox One, and the PS4. Even in the late game.
So perhaps we may very well be on the dawn where graphics aren't really that big of a deal anymore.

 

[weirdee]

well o course it's easy to make these claims when you have something to prove...

but when publishers go out of their way to diss the wii u for not running their bloomtek 3000 engine, we don't hear a peep out of you bastards at all

i am skeptical of these points and their motivation

Are you actually suggesting that Microsoft are bastards for not defending Nintendo in the press?

I understand that Microsoft hate is pretty much on auto-pilot at the moment. And Gamer Rage has a way of becoming a self-sustaining beast. But this is the absolute most absurd complaint I have seen.

I mean you no offense personally, but I just don't find any logic in your statement.

my observation is that it's apparently okay for Microsoft to watch developers repeatedly rip on your competitor for not having better hardware to the point where they claim they'll never make any games for it just because of that reason, and stand idly by with nothing to say while quietly supporting that trend, but then when your own ass is on the line, suddenly it's not about the hardware but the experience

they're bastards for trying to use a defense that they don't appear to actually believe in just to defend themselves against the monster they've enabled, and perhaps Microsoft defending Nintendo does sound ridiculous, but so is Microsoft expecting people to accept their claims after previously ignoring situations where that argument would have applied

i know we're supposed to be a "democratic" and "consumerist" society where you pick a team and then rally against the opponent blindly, but i think sometimes that life doesn't work that way

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

well o course it's easy to make these claims when you have something to prove...

but when publishers go out of their way to diss the wii u for not running their bloomtek 3000 engine, we don't hear a peep out of you bastards at all

i am skeptical of these points and their motivation

Are you actually suggesting that Microsoft are bastards for not defending Nintendo in the press?

I understand that Microsoft hate is pretty much on auto-pilot at the moment. And Gamer Rage has a way of becoming a self-sustaining beast. But this is the absolute most absurd complaint I have seen.

I mean you no offense personally, but I just don't find any logic in your statement.

my observation is that it's apparently okay for Microsoft to watch developers repeatedly rip on your competitor for not having better hardware to the point where they claim they'll never make any games for it just because of that reason, and stand idly by with nothing to say while quietly supporting that trend, but then when your own ass is on the line, suddenly it's not about the hardware but the experience

they're bastards for trying to use a defense that they don't appear to actually believe in just to defend themselves against the monster they've enabled, and perhaps Microsoft defending Nintendo does sound ridiculous, but so is Microsoft expecting people to accept their claims after previously ignoring situations where that argument would have applied

i know we're supposed to be a "democratic" and "consumerist" society where you pick a team and then rally against the opponent blindly, but i think sometimes that life doesn't work that way

But aren't you blindly rallying against Microsoft right now?

 

[weirdee]

But aren't you blindly rallying against Microsoft right now?

are you saying that i should just accept their new stance on faith with the expectation that if they get their shit back together financially that they won't just go right back to what they were doing before? i am just calling them on their bullshit, and i expect them either to prove their support for this claim by having more games that aren't overly plastered with the mentality that smothering things with "advanced graphics" makes up for other poor design decisions, or to entirely forget this claim they're making, which supports my argument that they're bastards who will say anything in order to keep their company afloat instead of playing a clean game

i don't think this counts as blind

 

[Strazdas]

They may be right for a change. the raw processing power wont matter. just like it didnt matter current gen. Raw power of PS3 is at least 10 times faster than Xbox 360. did we saw games with 10 times the graphics? no. because we got games optimized for the weaker console. the only game i cna think of that pushed this was Uncharted. and that was PS3 exclusive from a company that dedicated its life to working on PS3 exclusives.
So yes, we will see console graphics capped at the level of slower - Xbone - console and we wont notice any reasonable difference for PS4. the thing where we may notice is if somone makes a poor programmed game which gets lag spikes on Xbone, the spikes will be less on PS4 by sole fact of it having more "Extra" power to devote to "Carrying" the programming mistake. it wont be a difference most people will notice though.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

This is kind of funny. 1st PlayStation was viewed as more powerful, so Microsoft does a last minute fix upping their power a tad to come out still less powerful than the PlayStation, then comes out and says " Power doesn't matter."
Whoever is in charge of their PR really needs to find work that they are cut out for, because this certainly isn't it.

Now I do have to wonder if their last minute CPU changes are overclocking rather than changing actual hardware, because if they went with overclocking without adding the needed extra cooling they are going to burn it up quickly greatly reducing it's lifespan. Hopefully they didn't go that route and are replacing the actual hardware? If they just overclocked it in that little box don't expect it to last very long if you buy one because it is going to cook.

It's too late to make hardware changes in the launch models, particularly given that virtually the entire system is on one huge chip (wich is no doubt going to be causing a massive failure rate during production.) Unless they want to scrap all the stuff they have already built and release a new hardware spec that would be ready in a few months down the line this has to be overclocking.

And I doubt anybody seriously trusts Microsoft with that.

Also; I would have trimmed down the quote, but I'm on a phone and its a canine of the female perswasion to edit text on it.

So I really have to wonder if they claim power doesn't matter, why the hell did they overclock it, reducing it's lifespan at the last minute without adding extra cooling if " power doesn't matter?" The overclocking really doesn't make sense since they don't seem to think the power difference matters. These people make less and less sense every time they talk. They would have done better releasing the Xbox One without saying a word about it. LOL

 

[LosButcher]

I thought them the title that it was about electrical power, as in 'using less power'.

But I guess Sony does not have some of the smartest graphics programmers IN THE WORLD?

 

[Lightknight]

This is laughable. They point to current games now when the entire advantage of consoles is the ability to optimise software for even the smaller advantages. By the end of the generation the difference in power should be apparent to at least the developers.

It is my guess that part of Microsoft's strategy is to push cloud computing on developers mid/late-product cycle if not sooner. A weaker console may actually benefit that strategy and begin to push the future of cloud computing that I think Microsoft wants.

Panello started wasting our time the moment they kept talking after the "I'm not dismissing raw performance," bit. The moment Panello admitted that, all other information is unimportant. That is the moment Microsoft admitted that the ps4 is more powerful than the XBO. Saying that there are some unknown things about their architecture is almost meaningless with them both boasting the x86 setup under the hood.

The statement that there are some great looking games on both statements is just silly. There are already great looking games on the 360/ps3 generation of consoles and both of these systems (XBO and PS4) are multiple times more powerful than those. The statement that the XBO is less powerful than the ps4 isn't to say that the XBO sucks or won't play next-gen quality games. Just that the ps4 is clearly more powerful by an amount worth mentioning. Saying it isn't noticeable right now or that both consoles have beautiful games isn't contradicting that statement at all. It's just sidestepping it.

Developers aren't going to produce software that is using up all available resources right out the gate. They've got to learn the ins and outs of every component and that will take a couple years.

As for dismissing this as rhetoric that Sony used last generation. Sony was technically correct last generation but made themselves functionally incorrect. Their console was more powerful but Sony forced developers to utilize the hardware in such a way that that was so difficult that most developers just put games on the 360 and ported over the ps3 rather than starting there. Had Sony not forced splitting up assets into various categories and divided their RAM then their statement would have held up. But this generation is an x86 generation. The hardware isn't proprietary the way it's been in the past. The 30% raw power difference (on the low end of the estimate, FYI, if you're only counting the ) means that there is more power in the box and now that it is x86 the developers should be able to access all of it this time around.

That being said, I doubt that 30% would be that noticeable at the end. With the current gen being so impressive and these machines both being multiple times more powerful we may see a kind of graphical diminishing returns this generation where the hardware can handle more polished graphics but the human eye can't really tell the difference so it doesn't matter. At which point the physics engines would start taking up more resources to make the worlds more realistic and thereby being a better step towards emersion than just surface graphics are. The thing about physics engines though, is that they aren't as easily scaled like graphics are. Computers can show much better graphics on games currently on the consoles but underneath the games are the same. So even is the ps4 ends up being 30% more powerful then we may never quite see that difference if games are still made to function on the XBO which they will be.

So, frankly, I think the specs aren't as important as they once were. Just like there was a day when word processing actually taxed computers but advances in tech made them meaningless, so will there be a day when the resources of machines far outweigh the demands of any game. I don't think this is that generation. But it's beginning to feel close now that we appear to be on the upward slope of the uncanny valley.

 

[deadish]

...technical details...are irrelevant as long as they produce equivalent experiences.

Yes? I mean that's pretty obvious if they both provide the same experiences they are equal in those terms?

Also David Carmack already said they were more or less the same in terms of practical power.

John Carmack. John.

 

[deadish]

In a nutshell:

PS4 with GDDR5 - Significantly higher memory bandwidth available to the processor than the Xbox 360

XB1 with GDDR3 - Lower bandwidth than the PS4, but a lower latency as well, meaning requests will be delivered to the CPU quicker

Both have advantages and disadvantages. From what I can see, the PS4 pips the XB1 in power, but not significantly so.

To be exact,

The PS4 has one pool of 8GB GDDR RAM (176GB/s).

The Xbone has 32 MB (yes MB) of ESRAM (102GB/s) and 8GB DDR3 RAM (68GB/s). Developers will have to "manage" pushing and pulling things out of the ESRAM as needed - you obviously aren't going to be able to do bandwidth heavy work from the DDR3 that's for sure.

 

[Griffolion]

-snip-

Great clarification. I usually don't put the exact stuff in these posts, because the Escapist is hardly known for it's technical prowess.

 

[lacktheknack]

I'll put it this way:

40 FPS = experience

25 FPS = worse experience

And yes... towards the end of a console generation, this can totally happen.

 

[HyenaThePirate]

At the end of the day, all of this boils down to nothing more than fodder for fanboys to justify their loyalty to one system or the other.

For those of us who actually care about GAMES, not the platform (Especially since I'm a grown up and will own BOTH systems during the console cycle at some point, just get one, save money and buy the other a year later or so) these arguments always sound stupid to me.

What I care about is the GAME and how it PLAYS, not what it LOOKS like.

Uncharted were really beautiful games, but as the series went on, they became kind of boring because it was basically a series of linked events and encounters where the player's control was increasingly shrank in order to present story. I'd rather have a game that looked cruddy but played phenomenally than something that blows its load on graphical presentation and has no real solid game experience.

Case in point, MGS4 looked FANTASTIC but compared to other action/stealth games, it was BORING and forgettable.
Conversely, Gears of War always looks fantastic for the world it is set in, but Killzone's gameplay trumps it every time (in my opinion of course).

Final Fantasy is a FANTASTIC visual game. But that's it. VISUAL.
Skyrim doesn't look as beautiful visually, but the content blows anything the FF series has to offer.

Games.. NOT Graphics. This isn't 1996 anymore.

 

[Boris Goodenough]

John Carmack. John.

Sorry
And I yes I know he's a legend, and it didn't sound right to me when I wrote and I forgot to check it.

 

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

At the end of the day, all of this boils down to nothing more than fodder for fanboys to justify their loyalty to one system or the other.

For those of us who actually care about GAMES, not the platform (Especially since I'm a grown up and will own BOTH systems during the console cycle at some point, just get one, save money and buy the other a year later or so) these arguments always sound stupid to me.

What I care about is the GAME and how it PLAYS, not what it LOOKS like.

Uncharted were really beautiful games, but as the series went on, they became kind of boring because it was basically a series of linked events and encounters where the player's control was increasingly shrank in order to present story. I'd rather have a game that looked cruddy but played phenomenally than something that blows its load on graphical presentation and has no real solid game experience.

Case in point, MGS4 looked FANTASTIC but compared to other action/stealth games, it was BORING and forgettable.
Conversely, Gears of War always looks fantastic for the world it is set in, but Killzone's gameplay trumps it every time (in my opinion of course).

Final Fantasy is a FANTASTIC visual game. But that's it. VISUAL.
Skyrim doesn't look as beautiful visually, but the content blows anything the FF series has to offer.

Games.. NOT Graphics. This isn't 1996 anymore.

This isn't just about the visual though. The loading screen times on Skyrim for Xbox 360 take ages compared to pc for example, and the power has everything to do with that, if you have the game for both you will see how bad it really is to compare it to. This affects every single time you enter a new city, a shop, a house. It is extremely irritating and effects game play to have to waste that much time staring at loading screens.

This will be the first cycle I will not be buying both consoles unless they offer a Kinect free Xbox with a removable hard drive in the future. Those two issues are ultimately deal breakers for me, even though I play Xbox 360 currently MORE than I play PS3. The power you get for the dollar really does account in the " value being offered". They are not really offering me much in regards to games that I cannot play elsewhere, and if the games are going to play better elsewhere, why would I play them on the slower device?

 

[Vhite]

Microsoft needs to give us free stuff if they want us to like them.

Here, have some more fee stuff. That's close enough.