Microsoft Disputes PS4 Power Advantage

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

Thanks to its GDDR5 RAM and GPU, there are some who have been claiming that the PlayStation 4 will have a substantial power advantage over the Xbox One. Albert Penello, Microsoft’s director of product planning, in turn, has stepped up to defend the company’s forthcoming console. “I’m not dismissing raw performance,” said Penello. “I’m stating – as I have stated from the beginning – that the performance delta between the two platforms is not as great as the raw numbers lead the average consumer to believe.”

Penello went on to describe how absurd it is to imagine that Microsoft would ever let the Xbox One be considerably weaker than its most direct competitor. “Microsoft has some of the smartest graphics programmers IN THE WORLD,” he said. “Do you really think we don’t know how to build a system optimized for maximizing graphics for programmers? Seriously? There is no way we’re giving up a 30%+ advantage to Sony. And ANYONE who has seen both systems running could say there are great looking games on both systems. If there was really huge performance difference – it would be obvious.”

Penello would peg such talk as little more than the standard rhetoric that emerges with every new console generation. “It’s been the same EVERY generation, Sony claims more power, they did it with Cell, they did it with Emotion Engine, and they are doing it again. And, in the end, games on our system looked the same or better.” While there are doubtless some who would claim issues like this are important in the grand scheme of the console wars, Penello perhaps has some point when he pegs such discussions as being fairly redundant. As long as the two consoles can produce comparable experiences, few are likely to notice or care in the long run about which system has the most impressive internal doodads. As tends to be the case in the end, it’s all about the games.

Source: NeoGAF via Videogamer