If GAF would like to hear a little story:
Before PS4 and Xbox One were revealed, I remember having frank discussions with plenty of "insiders" while I was doing an observorship in Washington.
I talked to too many people (IRL and on GAF) who pretended to be somebody else, or were parroting information handed from tertiary sources. Eventually I found a few people who were spot on, and some who provided me with concrete evidence (the names of the Onion/Garlic, specific title names in development, and sheets that have still yet to leak).
However, what is relevant to the discussion was the paranoia at the time. Microsoft, I, and the rest of the developer community sternly believed Sony was going to go with 4 GB of GDDR5. Developers, engineers, and programmers all wrote off the PS4 as having a huge handicap with a distinct compute edge. However, unanimously they agreed mutliplatform titles would perform better on Xbox One.
I was having dinner with a GAF member / Microsoft employee before the February 20th Sony event, who told me Sony would be at a distinct disadvantage and should have bet the farm on RAM. Later in the week, BruceLeeRoy (who I personally know in real life) and I had both heard from a source that Sony had upped the RAM on PS4.
Bruce and I had numerous phone discussions about how this was possible, I contacted Jschrier from Kotaku, and even Richard Leadbetter, because this source who had provided me with 100% information in the past, was telling me that Sony upgraded the RAM (he didn't tell me how much). Not a single person corroborated.
In any case, internally at Microsoft before PS4 was announced they had a document which had expectations for PS4. The most interesting line was this:
"Estimate PS4 performance to be roughly 12-16X PS3".
They didn't mention anything about RAM, but I heard no one expected 8 GB GDDR5.
Fast forward to post February 20th and thats when the rumor mill and insiders became a little bizarre. I heard things like Microsoft had optimized hardware for dynamic resolutions, frame interpolation (120 hz modes to fake a 60 fps), and the magical power of the cloud. I gave up eventually, and E3 had come to pass.
It's been a wild ride, but I still remember the day February 20th happened, I received a text from an employee at MS that read: "GG MS". You are on GAF, and you know who you are
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