We’ve never seen a third-party game, the likes of Battlefield 4, Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag, Call of Duty: Ghosts and the like running on Xbox One — it’s always been PCs disguised as Microsoft’s new console. On the other hand, Battlefield 4 has been played on PS4 hardware, as well as Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. So what’s the explanation for this? Well, according to Penello, there’s no funny business happening in the background, where Xbox One units are just not ready. Instead, developers may simply be too busy trying to release games on multiple systems.

Penello gave the response while tackling a few assumptions on NeoGAF that claimed Xbox One dev kits were actually high-end PCs, and the games being played on these high-end PCs won’t be identical — not even close to the actual titles that will be shipped on Xbox One in terms of performance, visuals and frame rate.

Penello couldn’t stand back and watch these assumptions about Xbox One run wild on the internet, so he declared, in various posts, that it’s simply not true.

At least not true for the recent developer kits.

Not true.

First of all, our Dev kits and Retail kits are exactly the same. The only difference is the SW (Software) running on it.

Second, developers cannot turn off/on CU’s (Compute Units). Some of our internal engineers have been able to do that for testing purposes, but it’s not something available to developers.

Penello went on to explain the additional ports on some developer kits:

Yes. There is a diagnostic port on some dev kits. Still functionally the same as the retail units and made on the same line. To be even more specific, there are several versions of SW for kits based on what’s being run. And many of them are literally the same boxes.

He later clarified that the kits he’s been referring to are the current, retail form-factor units, and he couldn’t confirm whether those used before were high-end PCs. He gave no explanation as to why games have been running on PS4 if devs are too busy, however.

I’m talking about the current, retail-form factor dev kits. Anything shown on one of the black kits, or white zebra kits. There were very early PC-based dev kits with specs I’m not familiar with, lest I get caught in semantics discussion.

What do you guys make of this? Should Microsoft continue its war to defend Xbox One against PS4 in terns of specs, or should the firm simply shut up? Share your thoughts.

Thanks, DualShockers.

Speaking to MCV in an interview, Lewis added that even after the u-turns, they still remain true to their vision for the console.

When asked to reflect on all the changes made to Xbox One since May of this year, and whether said changes and reversals hurt Microsoft reputation, Lewis was adamant that it did not.

No. And look, we remain true to our vision that we want to be wherever our consumers want us to be. We think that digital consumption patterns will change and grow over time. We think that the Cloud gives you a level of sophistication, depth and breadth that people can only dream of. And overtime more people will embrace that.

That said, we want to offer consumers choice, including physical discs and being able to do all the things that they want with those physical discs. We want to be available in any format that our consumers are looking for. We’ve always been very committed to consumer choice.

When asked why Microsoft didn’t stick to its initial guns, Lewis said they must remain open to listening to what customers want, or else…

… “We would be in a dangerous place,” he said. Adding:

I love the fact that we are reactive and agile in that way. We remain true to our vision – digitally and physically – and we are genuinely in an enviable position versus anyone else in being able to deliver that. I wouldn’t trade places with anybody.

Well today, Penello was caught red-handed by knowledgeable people on the popular gaming forum, turning the situation into a monumental mess for Microsoft and its Xbox One.

Here’s Penello’s post about the power difference between PS4 and Xbox One:

I see my statements the other day caused more of a stir than I had intended. I saw threads locking down as fast as they pop up, so I apologize for the delayed response.

I was hoping my comments would lead the discussion to be more about the games (and the fact that games on both systems look great) as a sign of my point about performance, but unfortunately I saw more discussion of my credibility.

So I thought I would add more detail to what I said the other day, that perhaps people can debate those individual merits instead of making personal attacks. This should hopefully dismiss the notion I’m simply creating FUD or spin.

I do want to be super clear: I’m not disparaging Sony. I’m not trying to diminish them, or their launch or what they have said. But I do need to draw comparisons since I am trying to explain that the way people are calculating the differences between the two machines isn’t completely accurate. I think I’ve been upfront I have nothing but respect for those guys, but I’m not a fan of the mis-information about our performance.

So, here are couple of points about some of the individual parts for people to consider:

• 18 CU’s vs. 12 CU’s =/= 50% more performance. Multi-core processors have inherent inefficiency with more CU’s, so it’s simply incorrect to say 50% more GPU.
• Adding to that, each of our CU’s is running 6% faster. It’s not simply a 6% clock speed increase overall.
• We have more memory bandwidth. 176gb/sec is peak on paper for GDDR5. Our peak on paper is 272gb/sec. (68gb/sec DDR3 + 204gb/sec on ESRAM). ESRAM can do read/write cycles simultaneously so I see this number mis-quoted.
• We have at least 10% more CPU. Not only a faster processor, but a better audio chip also offloading CPU cycles.
• We understand GPGPU and its importance very well. Microsoft invented Direct Compute, and have been using GPGPU in a shipping product since 2010 – it’s called Kinect.
• Speaking of GPGPU – we have 3X the coherent bandwidth for GPGPU at 30gb/sec which significantly improves our ability for the CPU to efficiently read data generated by the GPU.

Hopefully with some of those more specific points people will understand where we have reduced bottlenecks in the system. I’m sure this will get debated endlessly but at least you can see I’m backing up my points.

I still I believe that we get little credit for the fact that, as a SW company, the people designing our system are some of the smartest graphics engineers around – they understand how to architect and balance a system for graphics performance. Each company has their strengths, and I feel that our strength is overlooked when evaluating both boxes.

Given this continued belief of a significant gap, we’re working with our most senior graphics and silicon engineers to get into more depth on this topic. They will be more credible then I am, and can talk in detail about some of the benchmarking we’ve done and how we balanced our system.

Thanks again for letting my participate. Hope this gives people more background on my claims.

Immediately, knowledgeable people realized that Penello was just being a regular PR mouthpiece for Microsoft, using NeoGAF as his platform. Here are some of the responses he got:

→ I do not mean to offend when I ask this but who typed up this nonsense for you. 272gb/s peak on paper. What rubbish is this? I study computer science for a living and this is garbage. Creative engineering and fud at its best. You do not have anywhere close to a 272gb/s peak at all. It’s one thing to beat around the Bush but it’s another to straight up lie. The fact that esram can only move 32mb at the previously reported 194gb/s peak should point to the kind of nonsense you are spreading. The majority of the data on the ram can only move at 68gb/s. I’m not even going to bother with the other nonsense in this post. It’s truly embarrassing that you can come up here and type this nonsense. You do not just add up bandwidth numbers like that. Shameful.

→ Really love to have one of your “tech guy” explain how esram reads & writes at the same time.

Gpu have a lot more than just CU. PS4 have 100% advantage in other key areas on the GPU that you did not even talk about.

→ I really don’t want to be disrespectful. And just to prevent unproductive ad hominems from others about being an engineer and not being an engineer, I am an engineer, but this statement of yours really does not make any sense at all.

→ This is insulting. And I am not even a tech guru. You don’t just add bandwidth as ESRAM is not all of 8GB.

→ I don’t understand how these two statements are logically consistent.

By the distributive property:

(X + X + … + X) * 1.06 = 1.06*X + 1.06*X + … + 1.06*X.

And that’s assuming the CUs work linearly.

Unless I’m misunderstanding you, you said the exact opposite — having additional CUs does not result in a linear increase in power.

Therefore, your statement is actually THE OPPOSITE of what you are pointing out:

(X + X + … + X) * 1.06 > 1.06*X + 1.06*X + … + 1.06*X.

But then, by your very own logic, having each CU running 6% faster is actually **worse** than a 6% increase overall.

→ I know you think you gain something by coming on here and giving us the PR message but a lot of us know a little about what we are talking about here. Putting the “peak bw” nonsense just rubs me the wrong way.

→ Enough… Seriously man, just stop this. It looks no better when you comment on how “we don’t know the full story from MS’ side” when the exact same thing can very well be said about your perspective on Sony’s hardware and engineering. And again, you comment on this with an extremely obvious bias in the discussion. I don’t think it’s beneficial for you to participate in these discussions; again, I feel like it’s going to do more damage to people’s perspective of your (and other MS representatives’) participation on these forums when you come in here and start engaging in hardware comparisons with your direct competition.

→ So, didn’t you earlier state you don’t know what Sony are doing with their console but now you know their unannounced CPU clocks?

→ That’s odd because the PS4 does not have 10gb/sec bandwidth, I believe you are making a mistake regarding onion, onion+ and onion(+) buses.

→ You’re only speaking on one side… yet you keep bringing up the point as if the hardware in Sony’s PS4 is just that, with nothing else to it.

→ I’m very disappointed in this magic math right there. I hope the upcoming post by your graphics people is a bit more honest with the real world numbers.
(I don’t think saying “on paper” is a get-out-of-jail-free card.)

→ So much wrong with that post.

Graphics are a embarrassing parallel load, that means you have very little scaling hit.
You do not address the massive ROP difference, which will make it even faster than just having more CUs alone.

I do not see anything that points to it not being just a simple clockspeed increase.

→ You can not add up the bandwidth like that!
The PS4 can do its peak bandwidth across all 8GB vs a system that only has 68GB/S from it’s main RAM and the majorly of it’s bandwidth comes from a tiny (32MB) pool of SRAM!

These are just some of the gamers and tech people on NeoGAF who called out Penello, and there are countless more.

My Take:

I don’t think Microsoft should be talking about PS4′s specs when it has no knowledge of what Sony’s doing outside of what the public knows… Especially when Microsoft itself is saying Sony, nor the public truly knows how Xbox One specs work. Furthermore, going to NeoGAF and trying to disparage your competitor’s console, one that is so obviously more powerful and better built than yours, is a recipe for disaster. But that’s been the Xbox One’s story all along, hasn’t it?

Microsoft has been trying its best to get Xbox One on the right path, and in recent times they’ve somewhat succeeded in doing just that. However recent moves by the firm’s executives haven’t played out so well.

“I’m not dismissing raw performance. I’m stating–as I have stated from the beginning–that the performance delta between the two platforms is not as great as the raw numbers lead the average consumer to believe,” wrote Penello in a NeoGAF post. “There are things about our system architecture not fully understood, and there are things about theirs as well, that bring the two systems into balance.”

He went on: “People DO understand that Microsoft has some of the smartest graphics programmers IN THE WORLD. We CREATED DirectX, the standard API’s that everyone programs against. So while people laude Sony for their [hardware] skills, do you really think we don’t know how to build a system optimized for maximizing graphics for programmers? Seriously? There is no way we’re giving up a 30%+ advantage to Sony. And ANYONE who has seen both systems running could say there are great looking games on both systems. If there was really huge performance difference – it would be obvious.”

It’s common knowledge these days that PS4 is way more powerful than Xbox One, and Digital Foundry had a nice breakdown of this. And it’s not limited to such outlets, even developers have said that Sony’s machine is superior with its GDDR5 RAM and unified memory, and powerful GPU. It’s there for everyone to see.

What do you make of this?

That’s all fine and dandy, but Penello took a different route on popular gaming forum NeoGAF, by trying his best in numerous posts to downplay PS4′s raw advantage over Xbox One, taking shots at Sony for comments the firm made spanning way back to PS2 days, and claiming that there’s no way Microsoft would allow Sony and its PS4 to get away with a 30-40 percent power advantage over Xbox One.

He even seemed to insinuate that NeoGAF members were dumb, claiming that Microsoft has some of the best coders and engineers in the world, and bragging that Microsoft created DirectX, so obviously they know what they’re about.

The company was doing well in recent days – not weeks, days. But today, Penello went full-mental on us, and Xbox One isn’t even out of the woods yet – far from it, in fact.

Here’s Penello: “People DO understand that Microsoft has some of the smartest graphics programmers IN THE WORLD. We CREATED DirectX, the standard API’s that everyone programs against. So while people laude Sony for their [hardware] skills, do you really think we don’t know how to build a system optimized for maximizing graphics for programmers? Seriously? There is no way we’re giving up a 30%+ advantage to Sony. And ANYONE who has seen both systems running could say there are great looking games on both systems. If there was really huge performance difference – it would be obvious.”

He raged on: “I’m not saying they haven’t built a good system – I’m merely saying that anyone who wants to die on their sword over this 30%+ power advantage are going to be fighting an uphill battle over the next 10 years…”

Penello went on to question Sony’s strategy — as if Mark Cerny hasn’t been forthright with PS4′s innards, and as if he, Penello, has been in a cave from February until now. Sony’s clearly been open about PS4, and have, in many settings, painstakingly described the console’s architecture — yet Penello ignores all this, ignores PS4′s raw power advantage, and states there won’t be much of a difference once the consoles and games for them are released.

But it’s total PR talk, and about questioning Sony’s PS4 strategy, he said: “I’m stating that not everyone knows all the facts. There are still a lot of important details about the platforms that are still unknown. I have many, many questions about what Sony is doing technically.”

Questions? About what, Penello?

“The question I posed earlier, and the statements I’m making now, will come out when we see the actual shipping boxes.

“The most obvious point is that anyone looking at games on both platforms do not see ANY difference, let alone this alleged 30% – 40%. Both systems are powerful. Both are capable of next-gen graphics. I’m merely saying the application of that performance will mean the actual difference will not be that great.”

I’m not sure why Penello had to go there, as I think they’ve been doing a decent job getting a positive Xbox One message across as stated earlier, but they’ve shown themselves, once again, to be arrogant — the very same attitude that almost cost the company Xbox One.

Hopefully they get back on message soon.

That’s according to Microsoft Xbox executive Albert Penello, speaking to OXM in a recent interview. He said in some ways, boasting about console hardware specs “is meaningless”, and went on to blame Sony for talking about PS4′s innards.

“The problem is that Sony decided to go and and publish a bunch of numbers,” which isn’t why customers buy new consoles,” he said.

Players want “to play great games and have great experiences. I feel like our games and experiences are going to be every bit as good, if not better, technically,” he added.

He wasn’t done with Sony, however, saying about the company: “As a matter of fact, they actually go out and they talk about how proud they are about their off-the-shelf parts.”

About Microsoft, he said: “Our guys’ll say, we touched every single component in the box and everything there is tweaked for optimum performance.”

So the discussion about which console is more technically capable “isn’t going to matter”, Penello reckoned, adding that, “it’s a pointless argument because people are debating things which they don’t know about.”

Do you agree?

This past week most of the talk was about PS4 specs and how it’s more powerful than that of Xbox One, then suddenly, per Eurogamer, Microsoft made a claim that it’s magically found a way to make Xbox One’s ESRAM more efficient, and is able to extract, get this, 88 percent more power from the console.

That’s one day after Mark Cerny’s Gamelab keynote in Barcelona, where he spoke about the innards of PS4, eluding to why it’s so much more powerful than anything on the market, and easier to create games for, too.

Eurogamer was found wanting, however, mistakenly revealing its “sources” of this information as, wait for it… Microsoft!

Anyway, it’s all a show, Xbox One is way less powerful than PS4 and Microsoft, with bad habits, is looking to change the perception that it is… But whatever.

The question is, how important is a console’s specs to you? Does it matter which is the most powerful? Because the Wii, being the least powerful during its time, is still the bestselling console of current-gen.

It matters to me, but that’s just me.

Also, what games are you good people playing or have played this weekend? Let’s hear it! And have a blessed one!

Once you preorder and your transaction is complete, meaning once your preorder actually turns into a sale in November, the OG achievement will be unlocked.

Thanks, Videogamer, Xbox Achievements.

Through a process of extrapolation from the drip-feed of hard facts, the make-up of the One’s GPU is confirmed – 12 compute units each capable of 64 ops/clock gives us the 768 total revealed by Microsoft and thus, by extension, the 1.2 teraflop graphics core.

So that’s another tick on the Durango leaked spec that has been transposed across to the final Xbox One architecture and the proof we need that PlayStation 4′s 18 CU graphics core has 50 per cent more raw power than the GPU in the new Microsoft console.

But that’s not all. Microsoft also went with GDDR3 RAM where Sony chose GDDR5, the latter being a much faster and efficient tech than the former. Thing is, Microsoft, because of its unflinching focus on TV and other multimedia offerings for Xbox One, had to secure RAM at an early stage of the console’s development, while Sony on the other hand could chase a moving target.

Here’s how DF puts it:

The answer to that comes down to a specific gamble Sony made that Microsoft could not – the utilisation of a unified pool of GDDR5 memory. In the early days of PS4 development, only 2GB of this type of memory looked viable for a consumer-level device. As higher density modules became available, this was duly upgraded to 4GB. By the time of the reveal back in February, Sony had confidence that it could secure volume of 512MB modules and surprised everyone (even developers) by announcing that PS4 would ship with 8GB of unified GDDR5 RAM. The design of its surrounding architecture would not need to change throughout this process – one set of 16 GDDR5 chips would simply be swapped out for another.

Microsoft never had the luxury of this moving target. With multimedia such a core focus for its hardware, it set out to support 8GB of RAM from day one (at the time giving it a huge advantage over the early PS4 target RAM spec) and with serious volume of next-gen DDR4 unattainable in the time window, it zeroed in on supporting DDR3 and doing whatever was necessary to make that work on a console. The result is a complex architecture – 32MB of ESRAM is added to the processor die, along with “data move engines” to courier information around the system as quickly as possible with bespoke encode/decode hardware to alleviate common bottlenecks. Bottom line: if you’re wondering why Xbox One has a weaker GPU than PlayStation 4, it’s because both platform holders have similar silicon budgets for the main processor – Sony has used the die-space for additional compute units and ROPs (32 vs. 16 in One), while Microsoft has budgeted for ESRAM and data move engines instead. From the Xbox perspective, it’s just unfortunate for Microsoft that Sony’s gamble paid off – right up until the wire, it was confident of shipping with twice the amount of RAM as PlayStation 4.

So PS4 is now way more powerful than Xbox One and that, it seems, is final.

Source: Digital Foundry.

As you can see from the screengrab above, the system includes 8GB of system memory, a Blu-ray drive, and an 8-core CPU. Unlike the Xbox 360, which shipped in several different hardware configurations, the Xbox One includes Kinect and a 500GB hard drive by default. The console also has multiple 802.11n radios and an Gigabit Ethernet port.

So with its 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, PS4 is indeed more capable than Xbox One.