Thx for the info. I had thought low level programming on consoles was still quite complex. Would you say its easier than a high level PC API like DX11? Would these launch, cross gen games already be exploiting enough console optimization to have such a gaping performance gap as alluded to by Frenetic Pony?
I'm certainly biased. I find no APIs overly complex, relatively speaking. What's bothersome on PC, with all APIs, is that you don't know the cost of anything really, drivers can change all the time, and the higher level APIs can have dramatic shifts in function-call costs. New workarounds are bolted on frequently. Serving an unknown performance budget market (as is the PC market) creates polluted / complicated code-bases, and produces a lot of reasonable and unreasonable eye-balling regarding the quality presets and enabled features that are offered. A man-life is only so long.
The console APIs are reliable, they get more stable, but they don't suddenly change their performance. Mostly you have access to everything you could get access to, and long before release of the console. I personally can find my Zen moments programming there, [can] know everything (including at times the precise implementation of the API itself), and can count on it, and can make good use of it, know which space my creativity can explore.
Now if you throw cross-platform in the bag, all guesses are off. The above is mostly for "one game, one architecture, one API, one platform". The capacity of developers and architects to design their code-base around this aspect, is the distinguishing factor, not some particular API. There are not geniuses everywhere, and it's almost never a one man show. It's annoying too, demotivating even at times. Poor performance (in respect to the theoretically possible on some HW) on a console is rarely down to the API, poor performance on the PC (in respect to the theoretically possible on some HW) is more than you want, directly or indirectly down to the API.
Picking up a feature which is hard to get a grip on, on the PC, is up to each project. Obviously there are many stakeholders together with you in a room: the social sphere, the IHVs (some more than others), the companies bank account, the PR, the team composition and so on. There are cases where a correct technical judgement is overriden. "Drivers will improve", "Hardware will improve". This is not an argument on the consoles, you are unable to externalize a "problem", if it's there, it stays there.
The public, in general, is often homeing in on some sort of semi-understandable aspects, like hardware "numbers", or API "numbers" / revisions. But that's only a tiny fragment of everything.
I can not tell you anything whatsoever about what is the problem or efficiency of a particular project I have not worked on, I definitely can not make a generalized statement about the entire game industry as a whole. Maybe there's no talent, maybe there's no time, maybe there's no money, maybe the software architecture is crapy, maybe the producer is crazy, maybe the wrong person got sick, maybe another company caused your company to panic, maybe there's a pandemic ... What I can tell you, is that there are probably around 20-30 layers of operations involved with a AAA game, and those 20-30 stars often (!) don't align, and it's not correct to reflexively bash the IHV (which itself has the same 20-30 layers inside), and attribute all problems to "shitty" hardware, or incompetence or whatever.
RDNA is what it is, and you can judge it based on its own merrit. IMHO it's a fine architecture.
TL;DR: It
is possible. But we just can't know.