The Xbox One Scorpio turns the table on the PlayStation 4 in a lot of ways, but perhaps the most important way it does so, especially in terms of bragging rights, is that it will be more powerful than the PS4 NEO- negating the power advantage PlayStation has held over Xbox all generation.
When we got the chance to sit down and have a chat with Sampo Lappalainen, COO of Umbra, we asked him for his take on the upcoming Scorpio (6 TFLOPS), and its power advantage over the PS4 NEO (reportedly 4.3 TFLOPS). His response? There is more to power than just TFLOPs, and a console’s true advantage is in which one sells to customers better.
“More TFLOPs is naturally nice, but feature to feature comparisons are not the most fruitful discussion to have,”Lappalainen said. “Things like CPU speed and memory bandwidth play a huge role as well, but in the end it’s the big picture that matters. I think that until both consoles are on the shelf of a store, the jury is still out on which has the upper hand.”
That said, he also believes that Umbra is well positioned for the new consoles. “As our product is so platform agnostic, we don’t have to do much whenever a new platform emerges. This hold true with the new console generations as well. With the developers having the difficult task of supporting these new platforms, I would imagine that our assistance is more valued than ever.”
I think that on the whole, he is right- there is more to a console comparison than just one parameter like TFLOPs. However it is also true that the Scorpio will end up the more powerful console, after all.
