Following on from our earlier article regarding the PS4’s superior speed, more developers have come forward to report the same finding. Edge is reporting similar claims from “multiple high-level game development sources,” who describe the difference in performance between the consoles as “significant” and “obvious.”
Memory reads on the PS4 are said to be 40%-50% faster, thanks to the PS4’s faster GDDR5 memory, and the ALU (Arithmetic Logic Unit) is around 50% faster. “Xbox One is weaker and it’s a pain to use its ESRAM,” concluded one developer.
Edge give an example of an optimised, platform-agnostic build which would run at around 30FPS in 1920×1080 on the PlayStation 4, but the same code would only manage “20-something” FPS in 1600×900 on Xbox One.
One source has suggested that PS4 version of cross platform titles could be “castrated” so both versions of the game look identical. This would be done to “avoid ruffling any feathers” and “damage perceptions of a cross platform title, not to mention Xbox One.” However, another studio has dismissed the suggestion, “It would be totally fine for us to make one version prettier without any political difficulties but it usually doesn’t make financial sense.”