The full range of specs for both the PS5 and the Xbox Series X has now been revealed, and while the debate over which of the two consoles is more powerful will rage on for many years to come, one thing that cannot be questioned is that they’re both incredibly impressive pieces of hardware, and they both come with unique advantages in various areas.
One element of both consoles’ specs that we’ve known about for a while now is that they will both be making use of AMD’s Zen 2 CPU (or different variations of it, at any rate), which is a pretty significant step up over current-gen consoles. But how much of an impact will this have on game development and the sort of games we’ll be playing? In an interview with Erwan LeCun, co-founder Ape Tribe Games – developer of the upcoming cyberpunk stealth action-RPG Disjunction – that is one of many questions we asked, and LeCun had some very positive things to say about the next-gen consoles’ processors.
According to LeCun, the Zen 2 CPUs should result in “significant boosts in performance for most games,” while developers can expect to be able to make better looking and better running games.
“The benchmarks for the new CPU have it clocking in around three times more powerful than current-gen CPUs, which will lead to significant boosts in performance for most games,” said LeCun. “In terms of the development, it will allow us to make prettier games that run better.”
LeCun also spoke to us about the PS5’s haptic-enabled controller, which he thinks is “a cool feature,” but remains skeptical of whether developers will do much to put it to use in any meaningful way.
“The PS5’s haptic-enabled controller is definitely a cool feature, but I’m skeptical about whether most developers will specifically put in the effort to make their games use it,” he said. “For games that launch on several systems, it can be hard work to target specific features on specific consoles if only a subset of your userbase will experience them.”
In the same interview, LeCun also spoke to us about the Xbox Series X’s 12 teraflops GPU- read more on that through here. You can read our full interview with him through here.
Ape Tribe Games’ Disjunction is due out for the PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC some time later this year, but doesn’t yet have a concrete release date.