TFLOPS is bullshit when looked at without examining the others specs and details. But in certain contexts, it matters as much as any other specs, and can be a decent indicator of performance. All individual aspects are meaningless without context. This is my opinion.

I didn't lie about FP16 optimization, I don't even know what you're talking about here lol. Clearly, you're not paying the bare minimum attention to what's being written to you... You confused FF16 (Final Fantasy 16) for FP16 and chose to demonize me again lol. Don't accuse others of lying without first having the courtesy to understand what they're saying.

PS5 had meaningful design advantages that developers liked regardless of popularity, this much was clear long before the consoles launched. Series X is indeed the faster console "overall". No one argued otherwise.

You said the next Xbox being more powerful would be meaningless if it isn't popular enough. I disagree with this. If Magnus has a similar architectue to PS6 and comfortably beats it at every metric including GPU clockrates and related elements, virtually every game should look better on it. In this scenario, PS6 would have nothing that can't be easily replicated by the much less popular Magnus.

No. It's just bullshit full stop.

Radeon 5870 @2.7 Teraflops with 153.6GB/s of bandwidth
Will lose to the...
Radeon 7850 @1.76 Teraflops with 153.6GB/s of bandwidth.
The 7850 has almost 1 Teraflop less of FP32 capability... And yet is still faster.



Now that I have proven that you have no idea what you are talking about and that FLOPS is literally bullshit... We can move on.

You are correct, that I did get that part muddied up. I was at work and in a rush.

The Xbox Series X has meaningful design advantages that developers liked, but don't really take advantage of, the PS5 is the lead development platform this generation... And that is the important tidbit here.

Because if we go back to the 7th gen, the Xbox 360 was the lead platform for games, hence why ports were better optimized for the Xbox 360.

Correct, the Xbox being more powerful was meaningless because it wasn't popular enough.

Again, lead platforms are chosen by developers to build games for.

The Xbox Series X in every relevant metric should put it ahead of the PS5, but it doesn't work out like that in the real world.
Platform parity and optimization is a thing.

@ Pemalite.

1. 5870 (Sept 2009) vs 7850 (March 2012) isn't the brilliant or relevant comparison you think it is. They're from different times and based on different architectures. Of course TFLOPS will be meaningless in this instance. The only point you proved is mine, but I take it you're at work and in a rush again.

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.

3. I'm sorry but that's ridiculous. "Lead platform" isn't magic, and power does matter. We have an entire history where more powerful unpopular consoles beat less powerful popular consoles consistently or near consistently. The last example is One X beating the PS4 Pro and crushing the base PS4. This is true even back when consoles had completely different architectures, and optimization was a nightmare that required redesigning the game from top to bottom across multiple different platforms. Though on the other hand, games didn't take long or cost a fortune to develop.

The Touryst and the couple of Microsoft games I mentioned didn't look/play better on PS5 because it was more popular. Most modern games are platform agnostic, and will not be optimized fully on any console. PS5 does have the edge in optimization, but you're overplaying this. If even 1st party games aren't adequately optimized on your hardware, your hardware is the problem.

As Kepler says, if the rumours are correct, Magnus with zero disadvantages should be better in the vast majority of cases. PS6 will only tie it in some games that hit the fps/res cap, typically indies, and might beat it in a few lazy ports like Ace Combat 7 and Black Ops 6 on the One X. But even that is unlikely, because Magnus is probably a PC, with customizable settings and all that. I'll bump this up in 2027/2028 if we're still around.

In that case, Microsoft has two choices:

1) A system with a price tag way above the PS6

2) Back to subsidising every unit by several $100 to offer price parity

Nutella wasn't happy with choice 2 in the past 1-2 generations it seems.

In case of choice 1, we have again Spencer and his astroturfer gang shitposting "Our hardware is much stronger than Sony's" - that worked out really well...

Yeah word has it that it might be twice PS6's price. I think it'll be 50% more expensive at most, but who knows.

No way MS are selling this thing at a loss again, not with the way they're pricing the Series and the Xbox Ally these days.

If they do indeed go the premium powerhouse route, it will cost a fortune to extract as much money as possible from their diehard followers.

While it's already (nearly) possible to build a PC that matches the PS5 Pro for less than the cost of the PS5 Pro, could we get in a situation where the next 'XBox' costs as much as a pre-build PC with the same specs? (minus the OEM Windows 11 cost)

How much can they charge without taking a loss? Series X already up to $650 before pretty much getting discontinued. Charging more than $699 for the next XBox (PS5 Pro launch price) can it even reach PS5 Pro sales numbers...

Question is, who is this console aimed at. Those that bought the Series S aren't in it for the most powerful console. Those that are have largely migrated to PC. Series X sales are dead. So is this to lure those now PC gamers back to a box with restrictions? Are there still enough active Series X gamers to make this profitable?

It's not going to convince PS5 gamers to buy a more expensive box to play the games they like a year later (if they come to PC). It's not going to convince Switch 2 gamers.

Or is it to 'subsidize' their server blade plans by selling the hardware to their diehard fans as the next console. Split the R&D costs, side business.

They are only 2 years apart. Same company.

But the point is, flops alone is not relevant... Having something with more Terfalops lose to one with less, literally proves that... Arguing otherwise lacks any real coherent logic into trying to assert that flops is a legitimate denominator by itself.

But let's take the Radeon RX 7800XT which has 27.64 Teraflops of FP32 performance...
It should beat the Radeono 6950XT which has 19.34 Teraflops of FP32 performance, right?

You would be wrong. The 6950XT completely decimates it.



Or let's take the Geforce 1030 GDDR5 vs DDR4.
Same 900~ Gflop... Identical GPU, identical TDP, Identical architecture. But almost double the per formance for the same level of Teraflops.



Interested to see how you manage to do the entire mental gymnastics to try and undermine this blatant evidence of Flops being irrelevant, which has gotten even more irrelevant in the era of A.I upscaling and Ray Tracing.

Developers always prioritize a lead platform, that may be PC, that may be Playstation, that may be Xbox, that may be Nintendo, that may be Android...

And they base it on a number of different reasons like the size of platform and expected sales, to financial agreements with the platform holders and even the own developers internal goals.

In the case of the Playstation 5 vs Xbox Series X microsoft just hasn't accrued the necessary platform install base to make it as financially feasible to be a lead development platform for most multiplatform games.

The Xbox Series X has the superior hardware overall.

False.

Lead platform makes all the difference, otherwise every PC port would be 1000x better than a console port... And that just doesn't eventuate when you have stupid artificial limitations on games. (I.E. Some games had stupid 30fps caps in cutscenes on PC, despite the PC being powerful enough for 300fps.)

And of course shader stutter because PC is not the lead platform with shader optimization in big engines such as UE5.

Some games are built using Vulkan or OpenGL, these are more optimized on Playstation than Xbox which uses Direct X.

As for what happens with ports for next-gen, we will need to wait and see.
But as things stand currently, the Playstation 5 is the better console over Xbox Series X, despite it having weaker hardware, it has better and more developer support and that translates to the games.

"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.