The Xbox One X will be the most powerful console ever made when it launches later this year- but as I am sure mostly everyone is familiar with at this point, consoles, even at their most powerful, very often trail behind PCs. And that will probably end up being the case for the Xbox One X, as well- while the sheer amount of sophisticated tech Microsoft has packed into a compact $500 box is admirable, there is no denying that someone building a PC unconstrained by similar budget or space requirements could come up with something far more impressive.
In general, Paul Norris from Madfellow Games, the folks behind Aaero, seems to agree with that sentiment, as he revealed in an exclusive interview with GamingBolt. When we asked him specifically about the Xbox One X and whether he thinks it will outpower most gaming PCs out there, he responded with the following.
“There’s always going to be PCs out there that are at the cutting edge and surpassing consoles,” Norris mused. “I think it’s safe to say that, because we’re developing for a specific system, developers get good results from consoles compared to PCs of roughly the same spec,” he added, referring to consoles being better optimized for game performance in many cases.
“If you want the best performance you need to go for a PC. If you want value for money and to just bang a game in and get playing, consoles are the way forward. That’s my thing. I need to relax on the sofa and play in my spare time. I sit at this desk way too much already!” he added, pointing out the strengths of both formats.
Norris also expressed enthusiasm for how games, including Aaero, might look on the Xbox One X, though he did point out that specs like ‘6 TFLOPs’ are buzzwords more than anything else, and that for most games, programming is far too complex to be linearly proportional to spec increases like that.
“I’m excited about people getting to play Aaero in 4k. As far as my thoughts on 6TFLOPS of GPU… I’m not really technical enough to know what that really means for performance. Numbers get thrown around a lot but, in my experience, programmers will tell you that there are many qualifying factors that can change what those numbers mean in real terms,” he said.
That said, it is clear that the Xbox One X does look to be fairly well equipped to handle all kinds of games- now to see if developers leverage that extra power going forward.