The oft-cited Kyle Orland piece at Ars: "Why I'm not too worked up..."
He goes on to say you should look at the video and judge for yourself, and even that if you care about pixels and horsepower, the PS4 is the console for you.
And yet somehow everyone else reads it as "whitewashing" and the ramblings of a paid Microsoft shill.
From his article:
I can't get too worked up over what seems like an incredibly minor difference in practical graphical output.
Again, framing his opinion with an answer as to why it isnt a big deal.
Then:
we're reaching a point of somewhat diminishing returns when it comes to improving a gaming image just by throwing more pixels at it.
This sentence has implications in it that pixels are all that the differences in resolutions represent in the games we have seen differences in, it also shows a difference in performance potential as well. Again, framing the question with an answer that frames the consoles as performance wise, not enough to matter. The Ps4 shows more potential for performance, not just resolutions, based on what we have seen.
While he says early on that "to him" he isn't worried, he creates a narrative that underplays the differences. Beyond that, if he looked, historically the system with the better/more games wins anyways, so his warning comes across as a reason to lighten the load on the xbox one.
Also, he uses a graph that has been argued to death as inaccurate. There are a lot of people who can see a difference at 7-10 on a 40' TV the differences between 1080p and 720p. Again though, it isn't as simple as more pixels. The performance potential from the Ps4 is greater, so until we see more, you cant say "it probably wont matter", without showing that there is at least a method to the message.
There is no upside of trying to make the differences seem like not a big deal. Creating a narrative that there wont be a noticeable difference is not a help to consumers, when he doesnt know that answer, and all we know is, that the PS4 performs better for multiplat titles.
