We have now finally seen some games for the next generation consoles, or specifically the Xbox Series X since Sony is still yet to unveil their system. But, of course, for a lot of people the debate is still going to rage on between which one of their toys will be the most powerful. When it comes to these debates, there’s always focus on certain numbers (that half of the people arguing don’t even understand), but it’s not always the full picture. The developer of the upcoming Chorus, for instance, says not to think too much about them flops.
Chorus was one of the many games revealed yesterday to be coming to Xbox Series X (though it will be coming to variety of different platforms). Talking to Eurogamer, Johannes Kuhlmann, Head of Core Technologies at FishLabs, talked briefly about TFLOPs. The Xbox Series X was, infamously, revealed to have more of that than the PS5, which set the internet debate into a tailspin. But Kuhlmann said in the end the advantage really doesn’t mean a whole lot on its own. It’s very much about how the technology is used as a whole with the rest of the package that will matter. It’s not that the teraflop difference doesn’t make any difference, just that it all ties into so many things, comparing the two side-by-side doesn’t mean a whole lot.
“I can’t really speak on any number differences, but what I know is we do have the game running and it looks very promising already. But what we always see with any console generation is we first have to learn how to handle the hardware, how to handle the software, and how to make the best use of it.
“If you have a difference in teraflops, but then have an operating system or firmware that doesn’t allow you to take advantage of this, then it’s not going to be of much use. So there’s definitely more to the debate. It definitely depends on how you can make use of hardware and software.”
This sentiment has been echoed by other developers and, to an extent, even Microsoft themselves when talking about the teraflops difference between next generation consoles. In the end, we’ll just have to have these machines running in our own rooms to see what they’re all about.