PS5 & XSX – Discussing The Next Generation Out of Lives

Adam and Ben get together to discuss the next generation of consoles from the information released on them so far. They weigh up the tech specs of the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5 and if they matter, what some of it means and what they need to see to believe the hype.
https://www.outoflives.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PS5XSXchat.mp3
Adam Thomas
I’m Adam and I’m joined with Ben. We’re going to talk about the new console details for the next-generation PlayStation and Xbox as we have something to compare. And we’ve been, you know, given enough time to digest where what we’ve actually seen. So overall impressions Ben, initial thoughts.
Ben Nother
I mean, initial thoughts, you know, kind of all of the stuff that we’ve got so far for me is it’s just, just numbers, isn’t it? It’s just a constant stream of tech specs and stuff like that. I think the Xbox stuff came out a little while ago, you know, lists of kind of like the RAM and the processors and all of those sorts of things. And then we had the, I suppose now, slightly notorious, Mark Cerny, GDC, stand in talk almost, I guess. For what they were going to show developers and things at GDC obviously made public and whilst Mark Cerny is a fantastic orator, it’s the driest presentation I think I’ve ever seen.
Adam Thomas
Very much a technical talk.
Ben Nother
Yes. And within the context of it being a GDC talk you expect that. But again, lots of chat about just numbers and kind of the ethos, and the ethos kind of stuff is interesting. Again, the numbers are just sort of bouncing off me. I’m thinking, Okay, well, we’ve got X number of teraflops over here, and then X number teraflops over here. Really, to me, that’s kind of meaningless because as I suppose Mark Cerny was kind of trying to get out in the PlayStation chat, It’s all about what else is within that box, what else that’s being coupled with how things actually interact. I think at least from the PlayStation side, we’ve seen a little bit more of how it’s going to work as a unit than we have from Xbox. For me whilst on paper, it looks like Xbox is this big beefy boy and PlayStation is maybe slightly more lithe and I think accessible was the word Mark sort of used all the time. We still haven’t seen anything. And that’s kind of what I’m waiting for really before I pass judgement on whether one is going to be better than the other. Technically speaking.
Adam Thomas
Yeah, with these things, it always comes down to what the developers can actually do with it. And it’s all well and good. Having, we change this, and we put this in it and we’ve done this, and we’ve done that. But if the developers struggle with it for any reason, or just doesn’t get the benefits that they’re expecting, developers don’t use it or use it in a different way for other stuff, and it just doesn’t have the impact that they want. It may be meaningless, just yeah, garbage numbers, as you said. For me, I’ve been interested in the, because the worry was that we would just have to basically identical rectangles, but different manufacturer’s stickers. And that would be where what I’ve liked is the fact that although and kind of broad strokes, they’ve gotten very, very similar. The differences between the two show are very clear, you know, shift and approach divergence between the two of them. So Xbox of when very simple, straight down the line back numbers, we’re going to put the best parts, we can get in it, and that’s just going to do so they’ve come out with your, you know, your 12 teraflops, what they expect that will actually put out. Whereas Sony and PlayStation have went a bit more, Well, we’re going to tinker with a bit more and customise the different bits and try and make them all work that wee bit better. And these various ways th