So uh, what does Microsoft do now?

[Madword]

Azzanation said:

They don't need to do anything, As long as MS are making money and making good games, they will ride the flow. Its not always about selling the most consoles, its about making money. The XB1 will only get cheaper to make from this point. If the PS4K doesn't sell then Sony will most likely lose money on it, same will happen with PS-VR and we know Sony isn't exactly the richest company out there.

MS doesn't care about the PS4K, that's Sony's investment to worry about. They are clearly happy with the specs of the X1 plus they already have access to the biggest gaming community out there with Windows.

Sony are the ones taking the risk here not MS.

Actually you are very far from wrong.

The biggest problem with new generations is the cost of R&D, the cost of developing new SDK's, new development processes. The reason why the 4.5 is a good idea (and the reason why they went with a console that is easily upgradable in this way), is that it costs a hell of a lot less than making a new full blown console. If the specs are to be believed then its a step approach which will cost very little for sony. While they are winning, they can release a new console, which will sell for more and they'll bring in some people who already purchased the PS4.

So actually the risk is just releasing a new console every 6-8 years, that costs a lot of money, takes a lot of dev time, costs alot for developers and is a massive pain.

Remember it wasnt that long ago Phil Spencer was saying that they were looking at upgradable hardware, dont let phils recent comments of "we'd never do this" fool you. This is the way its going to go in the future, this 6-8 years out of touch hardware is no longer a good idea for many reasons. MS's big problem is they went with quite a poor memory structure, so longer term they'll have to change the hardware structure to handle better specs imho.