Both the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One have endured a rocky journey leading into their respective releases. Sony's PS4 had a wonderful birth into the public sector but has gone through a series of disappointing reveals coming into launch such as dodgy privacy agreements, oddly absent features and app support issues which have hurt its clean record. The Xbox One on the other hand had a birth by fire, torn apart by critics and gamers alike for weaker hardware and restrictive DRM policies. Now after several policy reversals and a strong library of games to come, it has slowly been coming back into favor with gamers.
There was another storm in a teacup that reared its head more recently when it was revealed that Call of Duty: Ghosts, the highest profile third-party next-gen transition title, was going to run at 1080p on the PS4 and only at an up-scaled 720p on the Xbox One. Many attributed this to the superior hardware of the PlayStation 4 and thought it might be the start of a trend with Sony's new platform being able to run third party games better than the Xbox One.
While still too early to tell (neither console is on store shelves just yet), this may not necessarily be the case, at least around launch time. Although, thanks to several outlets (correlated by Kotaku) releasing Xbox One and PlayStation 4 reviews of Ghosts, the Xbox One version reportedly offers a smoother experience.
While the PlayStation 4 may be running the game at a higher definition, it appears that the Xbox One version is currently running better due to the PlayStation 4's tendency to drop frame rates. IGN's Scott Lowe noted that:
"I did encounter occasional framerate issues during the single-player campaign on PS3 and PS4, whereas my time with the Xbox One version was stable throughout."
In agreement, Polygon's Russ Frushtick also noted that:
"Call of Duty: Ghosts suffers from consistent framerate drops on the PS4, especially during multiplayer when action got especially hectic. The Xbox One version suffered no such drops, maintaining a steady 60 frames per second throughout."
It is worth noting that many outlets have called the difference in graphics and performance of both consoles negligible and that at this point, at least where Ghosts is concerned, neither console has any sort of significant upper-hand. While many gamers who feel a loyalty to one brand or another often find minute details to argue that their preference is "better," perhaps it would be best to leave discussions of the performance of each console out of the equation until there is more varied pool of games and more conclusive results. Not to mention, updates for each console and the game itself.