ATI: Xbox 360 More Powerful Than PS3

Despite what you may have heard from E3, ATI says that Microsoft actually has the edge in the next-gen race.

On the playground of the videogame industry, Sony and Microsoft are the kids sitting next to the swings, each claiming to have the better toy. To one not-quite-impartial observer, however, Sony doesn't have the advantage many are giving it.

As for which one is sexier...

"I think PS3 will almost certainly be slower and less powerful [than Xbox 360]," Richard Huddy told US technology site Bit-Tech.net.

Huddy, who works for ATI, the company supplying Microsoft with the Xbox 360 graphics chip, says that the low-level design of ATI's so-called Xenos graphics chip will give game creators more flexibility and ease-of-use than the Nvidia RSX graphics chip that will power the PlayStation 3.

This bold claim is built on Microsoft and ATI's decision to go with a more unified design for Xenos than the split structure of RSX. Both Microsoft and Sony have opted for multi-core processors as well, though Huddy predicts programming for Sony's seven-core Cell CPU will be "very, very difficult".

...you'll have to decide yourself

Microsoft's switch from Nvidia, which made the Xbox graphics processor, to ATI also causes headaches for backwards compatibility (allowing Xbox 360 to play Xbox games).

To get around this, Microsoft is working on emulating the processor and graphics card of the Xbox and will supply a software intermediate that would allow Microsoft's new console to play current games.

The reason for this elaborate kludge was that Microsoft doesn't appear to be convinced that backwards compatibility is particularly important, a sentiment Huddy confirms.

"Microsoft weren't focused on hardware backwards compatibility early on," said Huddy. "That wasn't in the specification [for Xbox 360]."

"They believed that any compatibility they could get would come in through a software layer, and they didn't want to compromise this generation's hardware for the sake of last generation's games."

And yet all gamers care about are the games, and it's here that Microsoft has the upper hand. While Sony wowed audiences at E3 with stunning tech demos, Microsoft already has playable games out there.

The company lost some of its momentum at last month's E3 in Los Angeles, similar to what happened before Xbox launched in 2001. Microsoft will be hoping for another turnaround ahead of Xbox 360's near-simultaneous worldwide launch at the end of the year.

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo Games