The PlayStation 4 and Xbox One Launch
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Sony’s PlayStation 4 and Microsoft’s Xbox One launched in November 2013. Both consoles moved much closer to PC-style hardware than their predecessors, using AMD x86-64 processors and Radeon-derived graphics.
The PS4 used a unified 8 GB pool of GDDR5 memory, while the Xbox One combined 8 GB of DDR3 with a smaller high-bandwidth ESRAM buffer. These memory choices affected how developers optimized graphics workloads even though both machines shared similar CPU architecture.
Using x86-64 made cross-platform game development easier than on the exotic Cell processor in the PlayStation 3. The generation also made online services, digital downloads, game updates, and streaming central parts of console design rather than optional extras.