Xbox 360 is older than Core 2 Duo, high end PC was dual k8 at 2.4GHz +- when the xbox 360 was released, actually most PC gamers had single core K8 and Netburst at the time... the Xbox 360 CPU was somewhat impressive when released (late 2005/early 2006)
same for the PS3 a year later, the Cell SPEs had some respectable numbers, considering it happened before GPGPU was really a thing.
the PS4/XO CPU was underpowered (compared to mid range PCs) since the start, unlike the previous gen.
Stating an opinion without hard data to back it up doesn't prove your point. Here I'll get started on my end:
Core 2 Duo launched
July 16, 2006, before PS3.
By August 2007, I had a Q6600 G0 @ 3.4Ghz, which cost $300 CDN. Since Nehalem had about a 20% faster IPC over C2D/Q, a stock i7 920 was still slower overall than a Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz. Metro 2033 developer estimated that the entire Xbox 360 CPU was only 70-85% as fast as a single Core i7 Nehalem. That means the Q6600 @ 3.4Ghz would have completely wiped the floor with Xbox 360's CPU in games as it has up to 4X the CPU performance assuming well threaded apps. Of course no game scales 100% across 4 cores but we are discussing theoretical maximum. If we are going to trash weak Jaguar cores against a 4790K/5960X, it's only fair that we look at top end Intel performance back then too.
Just 20 months after PS3's launch, everything inside of it besides the BluRay player was completely obsolete with top end
280 providing nearly 6X the performance and 5X the VRAM. The floating point performance of a GTX280 was 933 Gflops, or
4.85X more than RSX's
192 GFlops, while GTX280 had 142GB/sec memory bandwidth, or
6.35X more memory bandwidth than the RSX's 22.4GB/sec. I am making the comparison of NV to NV here to make a reasonable reference point. Xbox 360's GPU fared slightly better but its CPU was even worse than the Cell's maximum.
Fast forward to today, ie. 13 months after PS4's launch, 290X is only
2X faster than the GPU in PS4 (~ R9 265), while 980 is about 2.4-2.5X faster. R9 290X's floating point performance of 5.63 Tflops vs. 1.84Tflops in PS4 is only 3.06x more and memory bandwidth is only 320GB/sec or 1.82X more than PS4's 176GB/sec. Even the 780Ti has less than 2X the memory bandwidth of PS4's GPU with 336GB/sec. However, PS4 has also has 5GB of available GDDR5 RAM, which means the GPU can easily use 3GB of that without sweat, leaving 2GB for the CPU if needed. In fact, it can use more than 3GB because 3GB out of the 8GB is saved for the OS.
I already linked that GTX280 launched 20 months after PS3 and completely stomped it into the ground. That means for PS4 to have aged as fast as PS3 vs. modern PC components, only 7 months remain for a single GPU from NV/AMD to beat an R9 265/PS4's GPU by 5.75-6X, have 5X the VRAM available (or at minimum 16GB because the GPU in PS4 can access
at least 3GB), and have a memory bandwidth of
1118 GB/sec. The chances of that happening are exactly
0. All facts point to Xbox 360/PS3 aging
much faster against PC components of their time than PS4. If anyone has facts to counter my points, please provide them.
You guys are so focused on the Xbox 360's hardware at launch and PS3's hyped up Cell that you can't actually see what happened to PC hardware shortly after those consoles launched - an absolute revolution on the PC, that's what. The CPU and GPU gains that followed soon were exponentially more impressive than anything in the pipeline on the PC now for the next 12 months. Not only that but the early Xbox 360 and PS3 games had horrendous graphics while XB1/PS4 cross-platform games look
very similar to the PC.
Those early Xbox 360 games like Cameo Elements of Power, Perfect Dark, COD, Project Gotham Racing, Fifa, Madden and so on had laughable graphics compared to the PC at that time. You cannot tell me that Infamous Second Son, Killzone Shadow Fall, Drive Club and Forza Horizon 2 have horrible graphics compared to this style of games on the PC today. Uncharted 4 is looking amazing compared to the best looking games on the PC.
Name 1 game that looked amazing 2 years after Xbox 360/PS3's launch vs. the PC? The answer is none.
Let's take a look at one of the best looking PC/console games - Ryse Son of Rome. Mighty impressive for an HD7790 style GPU in the XB1.
What about Watch Dogs? Yaa....
Dragon Age Inquisition:
"
Both the PS4 and Xbox One versions are no where close to the Ultra setting on the PC but they are definitely very close to the
High settings found in the PC version.
Read more at http://gamingbolt.com/dragon-age-inquisition-visual-analysis-ps4-vs-xbox-one-vs-pc-ps3-vs-xbox-360#MwVo7ZrGDwOBkPIo.99"
Tomb Raider - notice a trend?
This idea that Xbox 360/PS3 were some powerful consoles is a straight up myth that has persisted since their launch. Not only were they not powerful but they aged faster than PS4 is aging vs. existing PC parts. This is even reflective in the games where Uncharted 4 will give the
best looking PC games a run for the $ in 2015 while PS3/Xbox 360 had no hopes in the world to even approach Crysis 1 on High.
Heck, the first attempt at a racing game on the PS4 technically almost trumps almost every racing game on the PC besides upcoming Project CARS.
I get it, there is a lot of hate for current consoles but despite our current PCs being more powerful, they can't pull that far ahead of PS4 in actual games. You can have all the hardware in the world but if you can't extract maximum power from it, who cares. Right now cross-platform PC games and PS4 games look very close, with only minor differences like shadow quality, resolution and AA separating them. The biggest difference is the frame-rate.
AC Unity PS4 vs. PC.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rgf-x0kYAHc