Gaming

Leaked PlayStation 5 specs suggest the console won’t be as powerful as the new Xbox

9 TFLOPS

PlayStation 5's alleged performance power.

CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/Getty Images

When it comes to gaming releases in 2020 and beyond, power is a big selling point. If these leaked Playstation 5 specs are anything to go by, the console is going to be almost 25 percent less powerful than the Xbox Series X. The leaked specs show 9.2 teraflops (tflops) of performance power for the PS5 — where these leaked Xbox Series X specs clock Microsoft’s console at 12 full teraflops of power.

PS5 could still catch up — If the Xbox Series X hopes to win this round of the console wars, Microsoft will need to keep a leg up not just in power but in performance as well.

Many of the Xbox Series X’s next-gen graphics features — like ray tracing and variable shading rate — will pull from its wealth of teraflops, significantly lowering its actual working power capabilities. Meanwhile, the PS5 is rumored to be built with a more novel approach to power allocation. If Playstation is able to pull this off, the Series X’s few extra tflops won’t actually make much of a difference.

Can these leaks be believed? — Neither Sony nor Microsoft have confirmed these specs, but they have been around for quite a while. The specs were first stored on GitHub early this summer, and the leaker picked them up somewhere around August. While this doesn’t necessarily back up the data, it does lend some credence to it. Microprocessors this complex usually taken years to build, so these probably won’t be changing much before the consoles launch.

But neither of them will have Pokémon — So who’s the real winner here?