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Kyuu on 19 October 2025
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Imaginedvl said:
Kyuu said:

2. Developers were obviously more impressed with the PS5. You can start all sorts of conspiracy theories as to why that happened, but it's the truth. PS5 had meaningful/relevant advantages, and it's crazy to pretend otherwise at this point. Series X has advantages too, but the console apparently wasn't as efficient, and of course popularity is a factor in many cases, but it isn't "the sole" factor.

"more impressed"? What are you talking about lol

70% market share is what "impressed" the developers, not the hardware; if Microsoft had been in that position, I guarantee you that the games would have been way more optimized for the Series X advantages. But there was no real reason for them to even try at this point (and I'm not blaming them for that)

The Series X, is the most powerful of the 2 in almost all possible metrics, end of story (talking about the Play Station 5, not the Pro) but it did not mean shit because nobody (other than some developers or first parties) would spend time optimizing for it, while all the effort was put into the PlayStation 5 version of games / engines. 

The PS5 is the better designed platform. If Series X had no disadvantages, it would have beaten the PS5 easily without a high marketshare requirement, coz optimization even in the most extreme cases (like FF16) wouldn't have required as much time, cost, and effort. 

Xbox being more powerful in "most" scenarios doesn't guarantee the better version of games. Xbox being significantly more powerful in "all" scenarios does guarantee a better result in 99% of cases, provided the tools don't royally suck. "Tools" are a major part of a platform. They convert theory to reality.

PSP and Vita were more powerful and much less popular than their competitors from Nintendo. Did that prevent their games from looking near generationally better? No, it didn't, because Sony provided the specs and tools that developers used to a great effect regardless of marketshare or popularity. Popularity is not "everything". The rumored PS6 handheld with a fraction of Switch 2's install base is guaranteed to crush it in graphics/performance. If it doesn't, I won't go around making excuses.

Popularity matters when optimizing for a system with bottlenecks, design issues, disadvantages, or unique architectures. It matters less for a hardware that does everything well and has no disadvantages or major differences against its more popular competitor.

Specs and tools are important. Judging by developer comments/impressions shared by Jason Schreier and others (all accused of shilling by fanboys), PS5 seemed to have won the battle before it even started. And no, it didn't impress because it was expected to beat Xbox in sales lol. "More impressive" and "less powerful" aren't contradictory descriptions. PS5 is indeed weaker than Series X.