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SvennoJ on 25 April 2016
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First of all this is not the first time this is happening. The steam box or incremental console model was already tried by MS in 1983 with the MSX platform. Although MSX 2 was fully BC I don't think it was forwards compatible. However you could choose to spend as much as you wanted on a MSX computer, made by different companies with different features, even Sony made them. However the market chose a specialized console instead and MSX 3 never launched.

The risk is the same now. A specialized console can outperform a more general platform both in price and ease of development. The question is, will this really help tie your user base to you. When it comes time to upgrade, for wanting something new since it's all getting a bit stale, wouldn't it be much more enticing to try out a different platform with real differences instead of an incremental upgrade? I know I would be leaning towards an XBox or NX instead of Neo.2.

Another problem is that you're effectively creating an anchor with forced forwards compatibility. How long should the base model be supported? Instead of a ps5 in 2020 where developers can decide what features they still want to port back to the past gen, they'll be stuck with no option but to only have better graphics, while everything else is still tied to 5GB ram and the slow Jaguar processor from the base model.
As we moved further away from last gen you saw that cross gen games on ps3 and 360 got less features and started running worse. Just compare the features of FH2 or Shadow of Mordor. With this incremental model there would be no car tuning, drivatars etc or Nemesis system.

And how much can you realistically let 3 versions diverge. AAA PC games don't support 9 year old hardware, definitely aren't tied to having to run with 256mb video memory, 1GB system memory. It's always easy to say that we have plenty of memory now. 8GB seemed crazy 5 years ago, heck the ps4 almost launched with 4GB. Now the 5GB available is already cramped again. Not a good idea to stick with that until 2025 (NEO has the same memory, slightly faster speed) Nor the 8 core Jaguar at 2.1 Ghz.

Tech is slowing down is used a lot as an excuse. While that's true for processor speed, for parallel processing we're still in the early stages. GPU techology is still moving on, transitioning to finFET or 3D transistors which allows to go down to 14nm GPUs with more CUDA cores. 16 core CPUs are already here and AMD is also planning to use finFET for their 32 core Zen processor.  Anchoring to only being able to use 6 Jaguar cores is going to look really stupid in 2025.

Imo enforced forwards compatiility will slow progress down. Yet if you just want the same games in a higher resolution, I guess the incremental model works for you. I hope Sony makes it clear what their plans are at E3 going beyond the NEO.