E3: Who's the daddy?

The Xbox mavens are obviously riled by Sony's assertion on Monday that the PS3 has the edge in teraflops over 360. In an interview this afternoon with Log On, Michel Cassius, who is European director of Xbox, was cheerfully bullish about Microsoft's claim that Xbox 360 is overall a more powerful platform.

"It's not only about hardware: it's hardware, software and online," he said. "I've never heard anything from Sony about online.

"When you talk to developers, everybody tells you: to be able to develop the best games you need to have the best tools ... that's something we do at Microsoft on a regular basis, it's part of the genes of Microsoft.

"Go out on to the show floor today and see third-party publishers and see how far along they are with their games. It's not about a fancy technical demo. We can do that, it's no problem. I'm talking here about games... the real stuff.

"But with the hardware ... it was obvious the guys at Sony were going to say that (that PS3 is more powerful). I don't want you to be fooled by that. Of course they would say that. They say, wait, we're not here yet (but) we're the next generation.

"I've seen the chart (where Sony showed the PS3 is faster at floating-point operations than 360). I've asked people who know: how important is floating-point in the performance of games? They say: only about 20%.

"There are a few other things where, if you are going to compare, apple to apple, we are not two times but three times more powerful (than PS3)."