Two months away from the release of the next generation consoles, many have already made up their minds about which machine offers more gaming power before a single game has been released. Compare basic graphics and memory bandwidth specs side-by-side and it looks like a wash - PlayStation 4 comprehensively bests Xbox One to such a degree that sensible discussion of the respective merits of both consoles seems impossible. They're using the same core AMD technologies, only Sony has faster memory and a much larger graphics chip. But is it really that simple? In the wake of stories from unnamed sources suggesting that PS4 has a significant advantage over its Xbox counterpart, Microsoft wanted to set the record straight. Last Tuesday, Digital Foundry dialled into a conference call to talk with two key technical personnel behind the Xbox One project - passionate engineers who wanted the opportunity to put their story across in a deep-dive technical discussion where all the controversies could be addressed. Within moments of the conversation starting, it quickly became clear that balance would be the theme.
"For designing a good, well-balanced console you really need to be considering all the aspects of software and hardware. It's really about combining the two to achieve a good balance in terms of performance," says Microsoft technical fellow Andrew Goossen.
Read more…
More...
