yay, another generation of counting pixels!

From what I've read, using an actual version of Windows 8, even if it is stripped down, could be far more resource-heavy than a dedicated OS, plus there is the problem that games would have to work through Windows, which might not allow the same kind of base-level access to GPU functions.  That would mean actual potential would be lower even on the same hardware, though there are obvious non-gaming advantages to having a full OS.

Of course, I don't expect it to matter that much, regardless.  Most multi-platform games will be virtually the same across the two consoles and both will have amazing first-party efforts.

@ walsufnir

If they take the same direction but rumors suggest that they are going the separate ways so it is most likely that they would optimize there machines according to the route they choose, casual, hardcore or mixture of both.
Up till now we know that ps4 is fully optimized for the hardcore gamers but don't know about next xbox.

What makes you think MS can't take a $2-300 loss on the 720 to keep the price down?

And now that the PS4 is basically running on Windows 8, the two new consoles will be even more indistinguishable from one another than the PS3 and 360 were!

So... a repeat of the previous gen, then. Only with less exclusives and more studios shutting down.

The rumors for the PS4 were right on spot, except for that RAM Goodness. Because of that, I'm going to assumethat the rumors for Xbox 3 are also true. So that would be 1.2 TFLOPs GPU for MS vs 1.84 TFLOPs on Sonys side. That's quite a difference. Also, MS is rumoured to use DDR3 with about 70 GB/s while Sony went all out and got memory with 176 GB/s. Blah blah, you all know what I'm talking about.

Until Microsoft presents better specs, I'm just going to assume the PS4 is more powerful in many ways. Besides, Sony is just superior when it comes to hardware. They have a shitload of experience and some of the best engineers in the world, while Microsoft is really just a software company. Sony clearly has the advantage, Microsoft can only outperform them if they take huge losses on hardware. I don't know if the third Xbox is still supposed to be losing money. Microsoft has more than enough cash no doubt. Well, we'll see.

Power doesn't really matter that much to me anyway, I'll buy the PS4 and don't even care for the specs of the Xbox. What's more important to me is that Sony is focusing almost completely on games and that's what I wanna see. I don't see Microsoft going the same route. They'll probably be doing all that netflix/Kinect stuff which I don't care about one bit. Ah well, it's all pure speculation at this point.

It probably will be more powerful, and, if not, they will market it to seem like it is more powerful somehow.

Why would that make it matter less?

It won't matter much, it can't b too powerful as to not make it too expensive so I'll expect them to be similar. As long as both can run the latest engines and take advantage of the latest development tools they'll both be bombarded with games, good looking ones.

In the end its a matter of what library attracts you most in a system.

All I needed from the ps4 reveal was to see it run UE4 and luminous engine to feel reassured that it had all the power I wanted in a next gen system.