Speaking to Official Xbox Magazine UK, Xbox product planning boss Albert Penello lambasted comparisons being made with regards to the power of the PlayStation 4 versus Xbox One. “The problem is that Sony decided to go out and publish a bunch of numbers, which are in some ways meaningless. Because this isn’t like 1990, when it was 16-bit versus 32-bit.
“As a matter of fact. they actually go out and they talk about how proud they are about their off-the-shelf parts. Our guys’ll say, we touched every single component in the box and everything there is tweaked for optimum performance.
“For me, I’d rather not even have the conversation, because it’s not going to matter. The box is going to be awesome. The games are going to be awesome. I heard this exact same argument last generation and it’s a pointless argument, because people are debating things which they don’t know about.
“They’re not [head silicon engineer] Nick Baker or [corporate vice president of IEB hardware Todd Holmdahl], and I’m not [lead PS4 architect] Mark Cerny, so why are we having this discussion?”
What matters at the end of the day, over the power of both consoles? As Penello puts it, “You bought a system to play great games and have great experiences. I feel like our games and experiences are going to be every bit as good, if not better, technically – on top of all the magic we’re going to add with the instant switching, and the power of the cloud.
“So the whole numbers game – yeah, I’ve been following it online and it’s like, we tried having that argument last time. Do I want to talk about HDMI 1.3 or 1.4, it’s like ‘argh!’ It doesn’t matter. Did you see Call of Duty, it looks f**king awesome! It’s going to be great, you know. So we’re just saying, it’s not worth the debate.”
Honestly? He had us until “Call of Duty looks f**king awesome”. But to each his own, right?