Microsoft Senior Director Albert Penello has been all over the news as of late, discussing everything Xbox One. He's addressed a potential return of the Shared Digital Library, hypothesized how backwards compatibility could be possible, and revealed some of the new improvements coming to SmartGlass for Xbox One. Needless to say, if there's news worth reporting this past week, it likely came from Penello.

To that end, we have a new quote from Penello that specifically addresses the performance disparity (or perceived performance disparity) between the Xbox One and the PS4. More specifically, Penello wants to explain that the differences between the PS4 and the Xbox One is not as great as raw performance would lead them to believe.

Penello wants gamers to know that, although the system specs suggest the PS4, and its advanced GPU and its GDDR5 RAM, is the faster console — some reports say 30% faster — there are things about the Xbox One that are not understood. He also acknowledges there are nuances to the PS4's design that are also not fully understood, but of course the focus of his comments is the Xbox One.

"I’m not dismissing raw performance. I’m stating--as I have stated from the beginning--that the performance delta between the two platforms is not as great as the raw numbers lead the average consumer to believe. There are things about our system architecture not fully understood, and there are things about theirs as well, that bring the two systems into balance."

While consumer and high-end PCs are built specifically for raw power based on their RAM, GPU, and CPU, consoles are clearly a little different animal. The PS4, for example, has a second processor dedicated to background procedures (downloading updates, capturing gameplay videos, etc.), which helps give it a little extra boost on the utility side of the things. Not to mention, a lot of developers will likely be tailoring their games to the specs of the PS4 and Xbox One, so as to optimize the hardware available.

Comparing specs is fun, and it helps add to the conversation, but, at the end of the day, it's how the console performs as a gaming device that ultimately determines its place on the totem pole. So, if Penello thinks that the Xbox One can match the PS4 in terms of playing games, that's all fans need to hear — even if there will be some skeptics out there.

As well, these comments from Penello are likely to give Xbox One fans hope that they won't be at a disadvantage when Microsoft's console launches on November 22nd. At the same time, there's no way to know just how the two consoles will compare until we can actually run them through the gauntlet. Luckily there will be plenty of games  - Watch_Dogs, Call of Duty: Ghosts, Battlefield 4, just to name a few - available on both systems.

Do you think that there really isn't that much of a disparity between the Xbox One and the PS4 in terms of performance? Do you care about raw specs, or do you judge based on game performance?

The Xbox One launches November 22, 2013 in North America.

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Source: NeoGAF