So in the end, my secret plan of a Steam/Origin/Arc subclient and a budget gaming PC with a standard form factor might work... MUAHAHAHAHA!

Sometimes you don't need a bigger cooling unit. You just ramp up fan speeds.

The Playstation 4's cooling system is over-engineered anyway, mostly to account for things like dust build-up over years of use and hotter areas like in the Tropics.
The same goes for the Power Supply Unit, it's also over-engineered to account for years of use, not sure if you know this... But as Power Supply's age, they tend to loose efficiency and maximum wattage.

In general you are right though, the cutbacks of these two things is mostly to save money once they make the console more efficient, Sony made cut backs to the PSU once they made changes to their memory configuration which saved power for instance.

Microsoft is no different either, Microsoft's Xbox One cooler is even more over-engineered than the Playstations, which is why it's so damn quiet, hopefully Microsoft does the same with Scorpio.

Chip size isn't always directly attributed to costs, there are a ton of factors in play.

For instance, patterning can greatly increase chip costs, but if you can have a larger chip with less patterning... It will often be cheaper than a smaller chip with more patterning.

The Xbox One's chip for instance, despite being larger than the PS4's is likely cheaper to produce due to the sRAM being a relatively simple, repeating structure.

Here we go with the abuse of flops yet again.

Flops is derived from: Clockrate * 2 * Shader Cores. It's a theoretical ceiling.

You can have the exact same chip (Like the RX480) scale from 1 Teraflop to 7 Teraflops.

Who came up with that silly idea? There isn't a real limit on effective cooling for a console.
You could just throw a copper vapor chamber cooler with several 140mm fans at the problem.

PC GPU's have been able to handle TDP's almost triple that, whilst also being relatively silent and in a smaller form factor just fine for years.

I am not sure how they are going to sell a 500$ console, anything more expensive will be more difficult as I think PS4.5 will not be more than 450$. Forza exclusive to Xbone 2 will not cut it. Xbone games at 4K 30fps I am not sure will sell it either. 4K audience is very less IMO and I guess gamers want more fidelity in gfx, fps that resolution.

399$-449$ for the PS4 neo

549$-599$ for the Xbox Two (scorpio).

Xbox users seem hyped for the scorpio though, and that in about a years time or so, they ll have the most powerfull console on the market.

The XBoX SoC is certainly more expensive than the PS4 SoC. You can come from different directions, arguing by "you pay by transistor count" - and the X1 SoC has a lot more transistors. And unlike you seem to think, esram is tricky to manufacture (there is a reason not every foundry can do it). You can argue with "layers". Here again the X1 SoC is more expensive as has more metal layers than the PS4 due to its complex memory paths connecting anything with almost anything.

You would also have the explain your definition of economically - "just throw a copper vapor chamber cooler with several 140mm fans" certainly doesn't do the job so you have to try harder.

"PC GPU's have... " - we are not talking about $1000 oddjob pc graphic cards.

Yes Xbone 2 will definitely have approx 40-45% advantage in power compared to PS4 neo or PS4.5 but the price is steep for mainstream. So they will loose on that. Moreover how Microsoft will handle it, as a 4K 30fps console or 1080P 60fps with more detail. My guess is PS4.5 will definitely go for 1080p 60fps and slight improvement in gfx because it is not enough to do native 4K and high performance and no fps drop is important for better VR experience. Xbone2 with some 40% advantage I am not sure  where they will use it.

If you truly believe that, then your understanding of the foundry business is indeed limited.

And for the record, the Xbox One SoC isn't substantually larger, it's larger, yes. But only by about 5%. (363mm for the Xbox vs 348 for the PS4.)

Of course there is more to chip costs than that as well, clockrate @ certain level of voltages to get as many workable chips, foundry capacity, patterning, duplicated parts of the chip, volume deals... Not to mention you can have different geometry sizes at the same node, different transister types... And more.

Do you have a source to back this up at all? I'm genuinely curious.
the eSRAM is connected like most other L4 type caches in a SoC design.

You should probably look at some older $150 - $200 AUD PC GPU's that were outputting several hundreds watts and had multiple fans on a vapor champer cooler. It isn't a technology reserved for $1000 parts. - Those coolers were relatively minor in the bill of materials all things considered.

4k gaming isn't happening, unless it's an older re-released game or something simple/2D.

Scorpio-built titles will likely target 1800P. Maybe even 1440P and then using reconstruction, output to 4k.
1080P and below titles will likely just be upscaled.

I fully expect the same for the Neo, but with less 1800P titles.

Has anybody in this thread called it the Scorpion?

Accroding to some leaked Sony presentation there is not much difference between1080P and 1440P and they will use reconstruction for higher pixels. If PS4.5 can do 1080P 60fps on say high and Xbone2 does the same with 1440P it won't make much difference then. May be they will have couple of settings to ultra instead at 1080P. But if the difference is 100$ Xbone2 will still loose IMO. It is all guessing ATM.

Titan X 11tflops gfx cards can do 4K at 60fps on current games which obviously means Sony should stay away from 4K res. I agree with you that Xbone2 will not be able to do 4K either It will be medium settings at best with variable frames

That is funny... in every resolution/fps-discussion over the last 3 years you were always on the resolution side and differences like 900p on XBO vs 1080p on PS4 were a big deal.

But suddenly 1080p or 1440p "won't make much difference" because Sony allegedly said so? Even on big 1080p TVs you will probably see the difference (downsampling from 1440p to 1080p instead of shitty FXAA), on big 4k TVs the difference should be huge.