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Intrinsic on 08 August 2014
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Machiavellian said:

 

What I am trying to say is that yes, the PS4 has the hardware edge and we will see the difference probably in 1st and 2nd party games but on a whole we will have the same situation as last gen when the 360 held the edge in game comparisions but for most of those face-off you would have to have both games side by side or blowing up a texture to see the difference.

Make no mistake, we are in agreement. If given a choice I know devs will always follow the road most travelled. They will not spend extra time making one version of a game better than the other. Thre are two things that should be considered though.

  1. The PS4 is easier to develop for and more powerful; if devs keep using it as the lead platform then whatever they have on the PS4 running stably will not run as well on the XB1 without some serious work to the code and memory management. So even if devs are using 1080p@30fps as a standard this gen, if they can hit that on the PS4 then without a lot of work they will not be able to get the same code running on the XB1 without making some concessions. Hence the whole 900p and lower rez textures we see with BX1 versions currently.
  2. If the devs decide to make the XB1 the lead platform with the notion that anything they can get to be stable on the XB1 will run flawlessly on the PS4, then it brings us to a new kinda problem. The PS4s architecture is better than the XB1s in every single way. Not just talking about GPU, ram and everything else. There is not one single area that the XB1 offers better options or advantages to the devs.

    What this means is that by simply taking you "stable" game over from the XB1 and running it on PS4 hardware, you instantly automatically have a better running game. Something will be better; it may be resoultion, framerates, AA, texture detail, loading times...etc. The only way you end up with a game that is not in some way (weather its noticeable is left to be seen) better is if you actually put more work into the PS4 version to make it worse.

    And another thing about devs and lead platforms, if the PS4 keeps selling the way it is now. By this time next year it could very well have a 2:1 global lead over the XB1. Tht gives very little incentive for devs to make the XB1 the lead platform.
The core reasons why the two points above hold true are cause at their heart both the PS4/XB1 have the exact same tye of APU. The PS4 just has 50% more GPU in that APU and an all round better and faster architecture.