I was surprised to see that DF now has almost a million subs. I think their face/offs do matter more than we might think, and if they simply say one version is better than the other, i dont think people will care if the difference is 18% of 50%. there are also the worst case scenarios to account for, like CoD Ghosts last gen which ran at only 720p on the x1 and double the resolution on the PS4 despite only a 40% boost in tflops. RDR2 ran at native 4k on the x1x and around half the pixels on the PS4 Pro despite the fact that the difference in tflops was only 44%.
I remember Cerny pointing out how Ray tracing is very bandwidth taxing, and sony has a 25% less of it and it has to share that with their fancy new 3d audio engine. microsoft not only has 44% more CUs which is where the ray tracing hardware resides, but they also have more ram bandwidth to feed it. ray tracing should in theory scale with clocks so it should still be a 18% difference in rt performance, but i think we will definitely have games where we see worst case scenarios like cod ghosts and rdr2.
I am not saying that the Xbox winning face/offs will convince everyone to switch to the Xbox. Just pointing out that this is how MS expects to compete against sony's advantage. Despite making all new mistakes this gen, Phil has at least ensured that he has the most powerful GPU in a next gen console. Same goes for Lockhart, once again, he has ensured that he will have the least expensive console on the market. I wouldn't be surprised if Lockhart was revived last year because Sony was going out there buying up exclusives.
Besides, if Sony was so confident in the power of their console, I dont think they would go out on this spending spree. While I also dont think that the delta between the two is that massive, clearly Sony thinks its substantial enough to lock in these mega exclusives to ensure people dont jump ship.
Lastly, DF face/offs are going to be extremely interesting next gen. XSX might have better resolution, but is DF going to take into account the 3d audio enhancements or adaptive triggers in the PS5 controller? I would argue that in games like CoD knowing if a player is walking right behind you or having triggers with proper tension when pulling triggers is far more valuable than a few more pixels. But I am not sure if DF would focus on those things. They should but i dont think they will. There is also the UI enhancements which supposedly launch you straight into races from the home menu within seconds in WRC. If you could launch into a round of Warzone matchmaking right from the PS UI without even launching the game, thats going to be very appealing.
