Updated | PlayStation 5 will be beaten by the Xbox Series S in both frame rate and ray tracing according to unconvincing claim

Update October 28: Ubisoft has now updated the page concerning next-gen games, and the part for the PS5 and Assassin's Creed Valhalla now reads "detailed 4K at 60 frames per second visuals", thus changing "and" to "at" and putting Sony's device on an equal footing with the Xbox Series X/S consoles.

Original story:

It’s not surprising that there have been some wild claims made during the run-up to this year’s next-generation console launches; it’s not every year that Microsoft and Sony release their flagship gaming devices, so passions get feverish on both sides. With this in mind, a so-called “Xbox insider of the French-speaking community” has posted a seemingly outlandish claim that the Xbox Series S can outperform the PlayStation 5 when it comes to frame rate and ray tracing.

It’s already well accepted that the Xbox Series X is the generally more powerful next-gen console, but it would be an apparent lunatic that would suggest the US$399.99/US$499.99 PS5 consoles couldn’t keep up with the US$299.99 Xbox Series S. Strangely enough, it appears the basis of this claim comes from an update from Ubisoft in regard to next-gen games. In the description for Watch Dogs: Legion there is this statement in the Xbox Series X/S section: “fully benefit from the hardware accelerated ray tracing”. However, the PS5 part only gets “Ray tracing on PlayStation 5”. The "hardware accelerated" phrasing is missing...

In fact, it appears to be Ubisoft that not only provided the details for the better ray-tracing performance claim for the Xbox Series S, but the games company also offered the data behind the frame-rate statement. For Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, Xbox Series X/S owners can expect “4K resolution at 60 frames per second”, while PS5 owners will have to make do with “detailed 4K and 60 frames per second visuals”. The Xbox Series S has “at” but the PS5 has “and” – a slight difference that, like the language used in the ray tracing part above, has led some to believe the PS5 will be beaten by the cheaper Xbox Series S in these two particular processes.

However, Capcom has thrown a spanner in the works with a recent post about Devil May Cry 5 Special Edition. While the Xbox Series X can access a ray-tracing capable update, the title “will not support ray tracing on Xbox Series S”. The claim that a console with a GPU that can compute at 4 TFLOPS and consists of 20 CUs at 1.565 GHz can beat a device, in terms of graphics processing, with a 10.28 TFLOPS-capable GPU with 36 CUs at 2.23 GHz (variable) seems outrageous when taken at face value. Throw in the extra 6 GB RAM (16 GB vs. 10 GB) and famous SSD and I/O throughput speeds and you would expect the PS5 to be the winner by a mile in this particular console face off.

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