Microsoft has responded to developers' claims, providing Kotaku the following statement:

“Ten years ago, you could argue that a console’s power was summed up in terms of a few of its specs, but Xbox One is designed as a powerful machine to deliver the best blockbuster games today and for the next decade.

Xbox One architecture is much more complex than what any single figure can convey. It was designed with balanced performance in mind, and we think the games we continue to show running on near-final hardware demonstrate that performance. In the end, we’ll let the consoles and their games speak for themselves.”

Original story follows:

“ The clock speed update is not significant, it does not change things that much...Of course, something is better than nothing.

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A number of "high-level game development sources" have claimed the PlayStation 4 is around 50 percent faster than the Xbox One, with the difference being both "significant" and "obvious". Edge conducted interviews with anonymous industry insiders, most of whom agreed that the memory reads on Sony's console are up to 50 per cent quicker, with the Arithmetic Logic Unit also being about 50 per cent faster.This led a developer to claim that, without optimisation, a platform-agnostic dev build would appear around 30FPS in 1920×1080 on PlayStation 4, but at a slower "20-something" FPS in 1600×900 on Xbox One. Microsoft is aware of the issue, and the recent changes to the console's GPU were done in a bid to combat this. Despite this, a developer has downplayed the real effects that will be felt by the move, saying "The clock speed update is not significant, it does not change things that much...Of course, something is better than nothing."The Xbox One does have some advantages over the PS4 however, with one dev explaining, "Let’s say you are using procedural generation or raytracing via parametric surfaces – that is, using a lot of memory writes and not much texturing or ALU – Xbox One will be likely be faster."Fans have been trying to deduce which console will contain more raw power since they were announced. Just last week, Microsoft's director of product planning Albert Penello argued claims that the PS4 offered better performance that the Xbox One were misguided . Despite the supposed gap in performance, everyone's agreed that it'll be near-impossible to notice in multiplatform launch window titles, most of which will near-identical due to time constraints.While all the developers seem to suggest the PS4 will have greater potential in terms of performance, how this translates into reality remains to be seen. From a financial stand-point for developers, it makes more sense to optimise towards the lowest common denominator (in this case, allegedly Xbox One) rather than create two different versions.The Xbox One is due to launch globally on November 22, while the PlayStation 4 will be available in North America on November 15 and in Europe on November 29.The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 are both available for pre-order/reserve now at online retailers in multiple territories.

Luke Karmali is IGN's UK Junior Editor. You too can revel in mediocrity by following him on IGN and on Twitter