: While both consoles have 8gb of RAM (albeit, the PS4 having DDR5 compared to
: the XBO having DDR3), 3gb of the XBO RAM is reserved for system use (3
: operating systems and all that).
: Whereas the system RAM for the PS4 is apparently completely separate, meaning
: games could have access to all 8gb.

Current rumours floating about are that PS4 has something like 1GB of the main RAM dedicated to OS, so that games will only have access to 7GB and not [i]quite[/i] exclusive RAM accesses. It sounds leaner than XBO's situation on RAM usage, but not nothing.

: The thing is, the difference in stats probably doesn't mean all that much.

: As far as multi-format games go, the limiting factor will probably be the
: lowest common denominator.

Well, sort of. The difference in power and architecture isn't big enough that drastically different design decisions would be used, but it is potentially big enough that multiplats on PS4 could tend toward more stable framerates and better image quality. Probably nothing like the Bayonetta split we saw on 360 versus PS3, but likely not negligible.

: A deficit of 3gb of RAM, and using a slower clock speed to boot, seems like
: quite a significant shortfall.

The RAM difference might not have quite the impact that some people think. XBO is using a ton of die space on the APU for a big ESRAM pool, and that'll probably alleviate *some* of the limitations.