We’re getting to the point in the run-up to a new generation of consoles where certain people become obsessed with comparing spec numbers to determine once and for all which new system will be “more powerful” (and therefore “better”). Thus far this kind of navel-gazing stat-measuring contest seems to show numerical advantages of 30 percent to 50 percent for the PlayStation 4 over the Xbox One in a number of important specs, such as GPU cores, control units, memory bandwidth, and teraflop shading.

The stat battle has gained renewed attention recently, though, now that Microsoft Director of Product Planning Albert Penello has waded in to defend the Xbox One from accusations of it being underpowered. “The performance delta between the two platforms is not as great as the raw numbers lead the average consumer to believe,” Penello wrote in gaming forum NeoGAF late last week. “There are things about our system architecture not fully understood, and there are things about theirs as well, that bring the two systems into balance.”