With the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, we seem to be time-warping backwards, regressing to rote bickering over rumor and innuendo. The lazy story that emerged mid-September about the PS4 being 50% faster than Xbox One, sourcing anonymous developers from who-knows-where, was nebulous link bait, crafted to grab the attention of partisan gamers and professional trolls. They emerged, dutifully, to graffiti up the place and wag the conversation off a cliff. You cant have a meaningful conversation about a contextually incomprehensible abstract percentile.
This more recent controversy involving Call of Duty: Ghosts, by contrast, involves a thoughtful visual analysis by a respected game site, as well as tweets from official studio reps. The informational difference is stark: Here, at last, are metrics to dig into.
Ill summarize: Activisions Call of Duty: Ghosts for the Xbox One renders natively at 720p, whereas it renders natively at 1080p on the PlayStation 4. Assuming you have a 1080p-native television, thats a difference worth talking about. The Xbox One version upscales to 1080p, of course, and Infinity Ward claims the visual differences between the versions running on 1080p TVs are all but indiscernible, but Eurogamers Digital Foundry effectively says thats too dismissive that there are differences, and in some cases those differences are substantial.