Devs are claiming the PlayStation 5 is ‘definitely more powerful’ than Xbox Scarlett

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The Battle of the TFLOPS is about to begin in earnest. Both Sony and Microsoft have their next-generation consoles cresting the horizon, and both will be trying the outmuscle the other in terms of being the fastest console on the market. Right now though, it appears it’s advantage PlayStation 5, with a number of developers alluding to Sony’s console being faster than Xbox Scarlett.

Colin Moriarty, formerly of IGN, claimed in a new episode of his podcast that a number of developers have said the PS5 is “definitively more powerful” than Xbox Scarlett.

This report comes on top of a claim from Game Informer’s Andrew Reiner, who said last week he’d heard the PS5 is being designed to wrestle back the title of the most powerful console from Microsft.

It’s quite easy to get into the mindset that, with both consoles sporting 7nm Navi GPUs and Zen 2 CPUs, both the PS5 and Xbox Scarlett will offer similar performance. Cast your mind back to 2013 though, and the arrival of the 8th gen, and it certainly wasn’t so cut and dried. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 launched a matter of weeks apart. Both used variations of AMD hardware and yet the PS4 ended up both cheaper and more powerful. A similar story could well play out here, depending on what Microsoft and Sony prioritise for their respective hardware.

Performance isn’t everything, of course, but it certainly helps. Perhaps most important is the relationship between price and performance. A top tier console for a top tier price may struggle (as the PS3 showed), so both Microsoft and Sony are going to be keen to achieve great value. Both consoles could even end up loss leaders, hoping to recoup losses on hardware with ever more diverse subscription options such as Xbox Game Pass and PlayStation Now.

What do you think then, can you see Microsoft ceding the most powerful console to Sony? Or does the Xbox One X indicate Microsoft won’t rest until it’s the performance champ? Let us know your thoughts below!