It’s always fun to jump into the hype of a new generation of consoles, and we’re inching closer to a showdown that finds PlayStation and Xbox at a rather strange juncture in their illustrious histories. The Xbox brand has seen its fair share of trouble over the past few years, and Sony’s all-digital push has met with a few obstacles and a fair bit of negative PR.
However, reports as per KeplerL2 indicate that the PS6 and Project Helix might have had their chips taped out and locked in for that late 2027 release window are now doing the rounds, showcasing that both brands could be going full steam ahead on their next-gen offerings. But what do those chips mean? What could the new generation of consoles be able to do differently?
Those thoughts kept swirling around in our heads until we decided to do something about it. Well, we’re talking to you now, so let’s dive right in.
An Important Milestone
It’s probably a good idea to begin with what the term “tape-out” means. It’s essentially an old-school way of saying that a design is finalized and is ready to be sent out to fabrication. For us, that means that Sony and Microsoft could now be locked in, heading straight towards manufacturing and validating their new offerings.
Rumors have it that the PS6’s chip is going to be capable of 40 TFLOPS, while Project Helix is housing one that goes up to 56 TFLOPS. Those are measures of how many trillions of floating-point operations each console has per second, and while it might seem that Project Helix might have a significant advantage over the PS6 from those numbers, the reality is slightly less glamorous.
It’s in how each console uses what’s available to it that the true distinction could lie this time around.
The PS6 – Evolution or Revolution?
Speculations about what the PS6 can achieve with 40 TFLOPS point to a console that comes with about 12 times better ray tracing potential, and an AI processing speed that’s 50-70 times faster than what the PS5 can put out.
That’s definitely a bump up, but perhaps not in the way that you might be expecting. The rumored AMD architecture, the new chip, and the speculations surrounding the upcoming console’s output are all indicators that the goalposts may have changed after the current generation of gaming hardware. The smaller chip points to a strategy focused on getting the best performance per watt while pushing reconstruction and efficiency instead of merely bringing the biggest guns to the fight.
That could make the PS6 bring better performance than its predecessor, yes, but it could present that improvement as a massive upgrade thanks to the software that’s making use of it. So what’s Microsoft’s approach to next-gen hardware, then?
Project Helix Bringing The Big Guns
The higher 56 TFLOPS count points to an advantage in raw GPU resources in raw GPU resources, ray tracing, frame rates, and resolutions. But do those parameters that were once so important in differentiating a Series S from an X matter as much in a world where upscaling and frame generation are now a thing?
If the rumored specs are accurate, Xbox appears to be going for a more aggressive hardware design, but there’s no way of knowing how that extra output is going to measure up against the PS6 until we see what its makers have done with it, and what other developers do with it over time. We also remembered that this one’s kind of a big deal for the brand, and it could be the start of a fresh new chapter for the iconic console.
We certainly hope so, and there are areas where the two behemoths could share some common benefits while finding creative ways to use them.
New Benchmarks For A New Generation
While the PS5 and Xbox Series were pitched with improved native rendering resolutions with better frame rates, we’re not so sure that those are parameters that should govern what their successors are judged by.
We’ve got ML reconstruction, better temporal techniques, neural rendering (although that one does come with a lot of debate around it), frame generation, and denoising alongside ray tracing and path tracing as potential additions. If you’ve played anything on a relatively powerful PC, you’ve already seen what each of these can do with an image rendered at 1080p for yourselves.
We think that the PS6 and Helix are going to be judged based on how intelligently they can reconstruct a developer’s vision from a place of efficiency instead of brute-forcing their way to better resolutions and frame rates. There’s also the scope to iron out some features that should have been better on the current generation based on what was promised, but are largely a compromise between quality and performance.
If your mind immediately went to the ritual of loading up a game’s graphical settings and choosing between higher visual fidelity and frame rates, you’re probably going to agree with us on this one. Ray tracing has definitely been great, but it has come at the cost of 30 fps, which some of us are still all right with, but it’s safe to say that we’d like to see 60 FPS become the new minimum. That’s not to say it’s all the new consoles should be aiming for, and we’re curious to see if 120 fps modes become more common over time with a new generation of games, and if the visual quality a console can provide can sustain itself at higher frame rates.
Ray tracing could also become a default, and perhaps even weave in some stuff from path tracing too, which could allow so many things to improve on either console. Reflections, global illumination, shadows, geometry, and so many other factors could immediately benefit from improvements to how light reacts with the world it inhabits.
The PS5 Pro has been doing quite well already, and is already making RT feel like a rendering baseline rather than a feature that forces us into 30 fps. We’re hoping that the next generation of consoles removes the compromise altogether. But ray tracing and better frame rates are only parts of any modern experience in gaming.
There’s also the larger context of what a console should do in today’s day and age. Sony and Microsoft are once again taking seemingly different paths to keeping players entertained.
The Roads Leading To Potentially Great Games
This is where things get quite interesting. Sony appears likely to retain a more traditional closed-console approach. Microsoft’s Helix-focused strategy seems to be opening up the console to a broader overlap between Xbox and PC, essentially entering the competition against Sony by default, although they could be transforming into different categories of devices altogether.
We say that because while Project Helix opening its doors to PC players is definitely great, and could bring an absolutely ginormous library and more flexibility to us, there are risks. UI optimizations across varying hardware, the Windows overhead, hardware standards that can vary across games, multiple storefronts, and the potential erosion of simplicity that consumers expect from consoles are all areas that Helix should be looking carefully at.
However, Xbox Play Anywhere works well enough if you think about it, and Helix making that bridge more seamless isn’t something too out of the ordinary to consider a possibility. The Steam Machine has shown us that the same UI can be translated quite effectively depending on whether it’s being operated with a controller or a keyboard and mouse. We expect trade-offs, but we’d say there are strong reasons for a bit of optimism here.
Sony’s biggest weapon, on the other hand, could be in doubling down on its tightly controlled hardware target that allows studios to build games around a single configuration, and thus allow for better polish and presentation, and perhaps better-tuned graphical controls granted to players in the process.
There’s also the CPU on board to consider, which remains a mystery on both consoles until official announcements are made. Speculation is simply pointless at this juncture, but we’d say that whatever Sony and Microsoft are working with could be a major differentiator, as NPC counts, simulations, physics, destruction, animation systems, traversal speeds, and world-streaming all stand to improve with a better CPU running under the hood. It’s an area where the PS6 and Helix could do more than just churn out prettier versions of games in comparison to lower-specced consoles, something that the PS5 Pro and Series X are already doing quite well.
Justifying an upgrade over that means bringing better hardware while also making the software on board work well enough with it to create tangible improvements over the previous generation of consoles. That’s an uphill task considering the visual feasts we’re being served up from time to time.
But there’s the all-important factor of pricing to consider, and that rumored late 2027 launch window to factor into the equation.
Don’t Forget About The Price Tag
It’s all fine and dandy to dream of a beefy GPU and CPU, but a console needs other components to function, and those components are proving quite expensive, along with manufacturing costs that both Sony and Microsoft need to factor into their respective strategies.
How much of those costs can they stop from eating into our wallets? Helix’s beefier chip could point to a higher price tag, something that could be offset by the push towards improved PC compatibility. That could position it as a great option for someone who’s looking for a living-room console while their PC is always close at hand.
Sony’s lower TFLOPS count might leave it a bit of wiggle room to keep things down to more mainstream console prices, but it’s too early to begin hoping those expectations are going to be fulfilled. We’re going to wait on official word from both brands before we begin hacking away at those vines, but it is interesting to see what options the two companies have.
Of course, there are also the games to consider. Sony definitely needs some juicy exclusives that demonstrate what its new machine can do, and potentially show us how it does things better than its age-old rival. Microsoft, on the other hand, needs a game that showcases the merits of a console/PC hybrid, and why that matters in modern gaming.
We’d like to think backwards compatibility is going to be taken for granted at this point, but that’s something else that’s too high up in the air for us to reliably catch just yet. But new experiences that justify the hardware on offer are definitely something both Sony and Microsoft should already be laser-focused on.
And that’s about it! Sony and Microsoft might be sharing a common beginning to a new chapter with their AMD foundations, but are travelling along vastly different roads on the journey to bringing a new generation of gaming hardware and games to life.