Look, we don’t need people to tell us this, because the numbers speak for themselves. Sadly, fanboys will argue even facts staring them in the face, so here is yet another developer reiterating something we all already know- the Xbox One X is far, far more powerful than the PS4 Pro is.

“Yeah, it’s a pretty cool piece of kit,” VooFoo Studios told WCCFTech in a recent interview. “It’s substantially more powerful than the PS4 Pro, but the downside is that it comes with a price point to match. Whether that’ll put consumers off, we’ll have to wait and see, but this really is the most powerful games console on the planet. Microsoft are really throwing a lot more into the devkit itself too, really going that extra step to make development a breeze, which is great to see.

“We did have to drop a few minor things on PS4 Pro, such as some of the particle effect detail, and lower precision shading (which actually, is not really noticeable). We can go the other way on Xbox One X, adding extra detail. We already scale both ways for a range of hardware specs on PC, so it’s relatively straightforward for us to take that over to console too. As an added extra, we’re throwing in some anti-aliasing on Xbox One X at 4K. We had to drop this on PS4 Pro – we were happy to do that because with pixels so small, a bit of aliasing isn’t a problem. But when we can do it, it adds a whole extra layer to the crispness and clarity of the image. It’s still early days yet, so we are looking at other areas we may be able to ramp up too – we have some interesting options here, but I don’t want to promise anything specific just yet.”

Okay, so let’s get this very clear- the Xbox One X hardware is impressive, and is far beyond the PS4 Pro hardware. This is indisputable and inarguable, and if you actually contest the point, you need to learn about math and computers. That said, power alone means nothing. It doesn’t matter- unless there are exclusive games that actually manage to leverage the hardware and make for compelling purchase propositions, the hardware’s power and resources don’t count for anything.

So yes, Microsoft has the more powerful system. Don’t deny it, it just makes you look stupid. But also, Microsoft doesn’t have any compelling games to populate their new powerful system with- and I would argue that is a bigger problem to have than having a weaker system (just ask Nintendo with the Switch).

The PS4 Pro and the Xbox One Scorpio are fascinating and interesting, not just because they are an altogether new paradigm for console gaming, but also because of the stark differences in the two approaches- the PS4 Pro is a relatively more conservative approach next to the Scorpio, which represents a total overhaul of the Xbox One.

So when we got the chance to sit down with Mark Williams, technical director at VooFoo Studios, developers of Mantis Burn Racing, we decided to ask him what he felt about the two systems, and the differences between Sony’s and Microsoft’s approach.

Williams believes that the extra power of the Scorpio will help devs and will undoubtedly mean far more games on Scorpio will hit true native 4K @ 60fps. “It has generally been more difficult to reach 60fps on Xbox One than on PS4, so Scorpio will be a very welcome change. I’ve yet to see the functional differences in the Scorpio GPU, so it remains to be seen how much of a difference there will actually be, but Scorpio definitely has a significant advantage in terms of memory bandwidth, so we’ll definitely be seeing higher fidelity games on there,” he stated.

But would the Scorpio’s power amount to anything meaningful, given Microsoft’s mandate that all games on Scorpio also be playable on standard Xbox One systems?

“Yes, definitely,” Williams said. “We have to maintain parity from a functional and gameplay point of view, but we can really go to town on ramping up the visual quality. It’s like having a PC game where you get a new graphics card and now you can ramp all the graphics settings up to maximum – it’s the same game, but it looks a hell of a lot nicer.”

The PS4 Pro may be the most powerful console ever made at the moment, but there is no denying that the system could have been far more powerful, and could have pushed true 4K visuals and media. However, it is also indisputable that everyone who has gone hands on with the system has come away impressed. Sony’s wizardry leads to the otherwise underpowered PS4 Pro punching far above its weight. This is what Mark Williams of VooFoo, Technical Director currently working on Mantis Burn Racing, told us, when we had a chance to talk to him recently.

“I was actually very pleasantly surprised. Not initially – the specs on paper don’t sound great, as you are trying to fill four times as many pixels on screen with a GPU that is only just over twice as powerful, and without a particularly big increase in memory bandwidth,” he explained, echoing the sentiment that a lot of us seem to have, before adding, “But when you drill down into the detail, the PS4 Pro GPU has a lot of new features packed into it too, which means you can do far more per cycle than you can with the original GPU (twice as much in fact, in some cases). You’ve still got to work very hard to utilise the extra potential power, but we were very keen to make this happen in Mantis Burn Racing.

“In Mantis Burn Racing, much of the graphical complexity is in the pixel detail, which means most of our cycles are spent doing pixel shader work. Much of that is work that can be done at 16-bit rather than 32-bit precision, without any perceivable difference in the end result – and PS4 Pro can do 16 bit-floating point operations twice as fast as the 32-bit equivalent.”

Ultimately, this does come back to the point that console specs are far more nuanced than most people expect, and cannot just be broken down into one number.

Big Sky Infinity is available for £7.99 in the UK, €9.99 in the EU and $9.99 in the US. Of course, because they’re so much better than the rest of us, European PlayStation Plus members will receive the game for free for a limited time from December 12th 2012. Even more interestingly, Big Sky Infinity is one of the first titles to be a part of the Cross-Buy initiative, wherein you purchase the game on, say, PS3 and get it absolutely free on PS Vita (and vice versa).

Big Sky Infinity is currently available in both the US and EU.