Saddened! wrote:
Anyone got an opinion on the rumoured specs for the PlayStation 4 and NeXtBOX? According to rumours the PlayStation will have a more powerful processor arrangement with a third more power than the Xbox one. But the Xbox will have double the memory of the Playstation with 40% more memory available to games and three times the memory available to the operating system.
So which of those differences is likely to be significant if any? The current consoles seem pretty similar with the PS3 more powerful than the 360, but they have never managed to exploit that extra power to any meaningful degree up to now and the 360 is arguably the better all round console.
A third? 50% more powerful.
PS3 now has less RAM which is apparently why they can't have party chat and has an older graphics processor but still manages to churn out better graphics on the exclusives compared to the 360 exclusives and even Skyrim which Bethesda have admitted they can't even code properly for the PS3 looks a lot better.
PS4 will still have more than enough RAM to run what it needs and most places are reporting it has 4 but some developers are saying they got shipped with units that have 8-16gb as opposed to 4 - also don't get drawn in by a simple number, the RAM timings will be more important. The use of an AMD A3 is a bit poor though, that isn't even the best APU AMD do now so by the end of the year it will be massively out of date.
Both consoles should go for more exclusives this time because the ports are what has held both back, churning out COD every year on a 7 year old engine is just boring. It will also give consumers a reason to pick whichever system and will allow devs to work towards tuning a game to specific hardware and not what they do now of design on xbox and just port.
What I can see happening is there being multiple types in different price ranges for both systems with the Xbox as I've said before having a Windows RT version and then a full Windows 8 version, which the amount of RAM reserved for OS seems to indicate too.
The differences with the rumoured spec - PS4 will be able to render maps quicker and keep a higher FPS with multiple characters on screen, Xbox will be able to multitask better (i.e. party chat).