PS5 and Xbox Series X’s GPU Differences Will Become More of a Factor in a Year or Two

We’re well over two years into the current generation of consoles, and at this point in their respective lives, it’s becoming clear that the PS5 and Xbox Series X are both impressive pieces of hardware with plenty of technical capabilities, even if the vast majority of developers have chosen to release cross-gen games so far and thus haven’t been able to take full advantage of those advantages.

But how exactly do the two consoles compare with each other? According to Caverns of Mars: Recharged’s game designer and producer Tadas Migauskas, the differences between the GPUs of both consoles are fairly minimal. In a recent interview with GamingBolt, Migauskas said that though the two obviously represent a leap over their predecessors, for most developers in the industry – especially those that build multiplatform games – their differences from each other won’t make much of a difference. That said, as per him, with the advent of new rendering approaches as we get deeper into this generation, those differences will start affecting development pipelines in a more visible manner.

“You can see a general trend in games for consoles of previous generations – it takes a few years and a launch title or two for developers to realize and utilize the hardware capabilities,” he said. “At the moment, the impact on development is still quite low. A ~15% increase is significant, but both GPUs are so powerful, most developers probably won’t bat an eye. You can do a bit more on one of them. And since most of the games launch on both of the consoles, you have to work with the lowest common denominator. In a year or two, when newer rendering approaches are developed, more rendering work will be expected to be pushed through the GPU pipelines. Then, it’s likely developers with more resources, mainly AAA companies using custom engines, will try to adhere to platform differences increasingly more.”

Given the fact that we’re only just now getting to a point where developers are beginning to design games exclusively around current-gen hardware, it’s fair to say that it’s probably going to be a while before the full extent of the PS5 and Xbox Series X’s advantages and disadvantages relative to each other start becoming more apparent.

Our full interview with Migauskas will be live soon, so stay tuned for that. Caverns of Mars: Recharged is available now on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC.