PS5 vs Xbox noise grows as Tim Sweeney coos over the "best in any platform" SSD and Lisa Su spills some sauce over RDNA2 in action on the PlayStation 5 tech demo

Sony has been reveling in the sunshine brought about by the recent Unreal Engine 5 playable demo reveal. While the impressive clip has given some idea of what the PlayStation 5 will be capable of, a couple of industry executives have also been busy talking up the next-gen console. Epic Games’ CEO, Tim Sweeney, was talking about the PS5’s super-fast SSD while AMD’s Lisa Su also wanted to sing the console’s praises and mention RDNA2 at the same time.

Sweeney discussed the PS5 and its incredible storage architecture considerably as part of the Summer Game Fest. The Epic Games boss was effusive about the PS5’s SSD, stating that is was:

...a completely new storage architecture that blows past architectures out of the water, and it’s so far ahead of even the state-of-the-art in the highest-end PCs you can buy.

Clearly, the UE5 demo, which was running on a PS5 devkit, once again shows off the huge advantage the console’s SSD will have over the PS4’s storage device. This was aptly demonstrated with the well-known Spider-Man comparison clip, and now we have the main character of Lumen in the Land of Nanite swooping through the air surrounded by a densely detailed landscape without a stutter in sight. Sweeney reiterated his thoughts about the PS5 SSD with the somewhat controversial comment: “not only the best in class in consoles but the best in any platform”.

Of course, that last statement did cause a few punches to be thrown in the PS5 vs Xbox Series X boxing match, where those in Sony’s corner boasted that the UE5 demo would have to be “downscaled” for the Xbox, while those in Microsoft’s corner reminded everyone that their console of choice still had 2-3 teraflops more of graphical power to play with.

AMD’s chief, Lisa Su, congratulated all those that worked on the demo and added: “love seeing @Radeon RDNA2 in action”. So there you go RDNA1 naysayers or RDNA3 dreamers – the boss of AMD herself has confirmed RDNA2 is at play on the PS5. Of course, as some have opined, it’s possible that some additional PS5 “special sauce” features of RDNA2 will turn up in RDNA3 – but for now gamers can be satisfied with the PlayStation 5 boasting of “absolutely phenomenal” hardware and RDNA2.