Sony hadn't been expecting to see such a difference in native resolution between cross-platform PlayStation 4 and Xbox One titles, Worldwide Studios president Shuhei Yoshida has admitted.
"Since the beginning of this year when we saw leaks [about the specs] of next-gen platforms, we immediately knew since the tech specs on PS4 were accurate that the Xbox specifications were likely accurate as well," Yoshida told GamesIndustry.biz. "So we knew at that point that we had much more raw power...
"So I was hoping from earlier this year that when games come out from third-parties - because that's the best example, to look at the same game on different platforms - if there's any slight performance difference on the two systems I'll be very happy.
"I wasn't expecting something like [what happened with] Call of Duty, 720p versus 1080p - that's a significant difference. Or Battlefield 4, which is 900 versus 720 - 900 requires 50 percent more pixels to be rendered. I learned all this from the Digital Foundry site."
But despite PS4 boasting the higher resolution, Yoshida admits that "most people" probably won't be able to tell the difference between 720p and 1080p.
"I can confidently say that graphics matter," he added, "because I played through Killzone: Shadow Fall. What I mean is, most people probably can't tell looking at 720p or 1080p unless you're in the industry or you're a hardware nerd, but when you compare a game like Killzone: Shadow Fall to Killzone 3 on PS3, for example, the fact that the game is rendered and displayed at 1080p native means that every pixel is rendered, and in combination with the new Dual Shock 4 analog sticks and triggers, it's great when you're playing a shooter and you can see the enemy far away from you and you can move the crosshair to aim with pixel perfect precision."