I think the most interesting part is this:
"The same can be said for consoles. Sony runs PlayStation 5 on its own operating system, but Microsoft has put a customized version of Windows on the Xbox Series X. The two are very different. Because Sony has developed exclusive software for the PlayStation 5, it will definitely give developers much more capabilities than Microsoft, which has almost the same directX PC and for its consoles."
It's quite possible that the Windows overhead will come with some disadvantage (just like when comparing consoles to PC).
I wonder how much. Also, doesn't Microsoft run the OS in a virtual machine? That should create even more overhead.
No. XBO has an OS with two hypervisors, one for apps and one for games. And the OS used is a customized version based on Windows called Xbox OS.
XSX will probably be using a similar setup but the hypervisors are generally pretty thin and lightweight virtualized clients, and the Xbox OS has seen changes from Windows 10 brought over. Additionally, Windows 10 isn't nearly as bloated as some people think, if you customize the installation. There're systems out there where the OS sits on just a few hundred megabytes and still fully functions.
I'd expect XSX's version to be a bit larger than that because you need space for some of the fancy graphics and the UI and whatnot, plus space for features like Quick Resume, but it's still smaller than the 3 GB reserve the PS4 originally had.
This is current policy, There might be some changes for the next gen, which is understandable as they're establishing new budget rules. Of course I'm just speculating, but what else would antagonize devs if not some new policy? I don't believe XSX is such a failure they're pissed about making games for it, just like they were with PS3 at the beginning.
But it's Crytek :S.
And again, with their history in relation to MS, I take what they say with a pinch of salt. In a lot of ways this Crytek interview reminds me of some stuff an EA dev said about the SEGA Saturn to Next Generation magazine back in 1995. They used a buggy version of Daytona USA to speculate that the Saturn's polygonal performance was only at that game's level, even though it was somewhat well-known that was a buggy, rushed port highly unoptimized for the system.
But, magazines like Next Gen and a few others ran with it, and used it in their comparisons between Saturn & PS1, even if the Saturn was a lot more capable than that port of Daytona USA. So this type of half-truths and misinformation, it's almost as old as the industry itself, and it's usually done to paint a perception or shit a narrative before the generation actually gets under way.
So I'd advise people to always question these sort of things, regardless if they come off as pro-Sony, pro-Microsoft, whatever. At this current stage of the next-gen pipeline, ask yourself why a 3rd-party developer (who has a prior history with one of the other platform holders that didn't necessarily go over well), would put out performance speculation of this ilk, in this context, before the systems have even launched, following a reveal event for one of the systems that was met with strong backlash by a big group of gamers and people who love discussing these system specs at this time before new consoles release?
That's all I'm saying.
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