Pffft. Console power will always be behind PC, and with PS/XB consoles being much closer in hardware design to PC (and to each other) than in past gens the POWAH! of consoles has less to do with AAA budgets than this opinion piece suggests.

More power can make development easier if you are not trying to push the envelope, because you don't have to try to squeeze every last drop of performance out of the machine.

I really don;t think there is a legitimate argument that more power isn't better.So long as you maximise power for the price-point you are targeting then it gives developers options for what to do with that power. Sony was aiming for a $399 price for PS4, what sense would there be in going for less power other than increasing your margins? Certainly there is no advantage in game development by gimping on power for the sake of hardware profits.

The thing is that games are already having better visuals than what is on the Playstation or Xbox... Developers release their games with better visuals on PC, more powerful Console hardware can leverage that at minimum cost.

We can't forget either that some graphics effects actually reduce development time and thus save money. It's not catch 22.

Lol. No. Xbox 360 controllers had nothing to do with the PC's current situation. Majority of PC gamers use a keyboard and mouse.
It's actually Valve and it's Steam platform that we can thank for the current situation the PC is in, not Microsoft, credit where it's due.

Nope. E-Sports was around for at-least a decade before Halo came around.
You had the Nintendo World Championships/Nintendo PowerFest, World Game Championships by Blockbuster in the 90's.

Games like WarCraft, Command and Conquer, StarCraft, Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counterstrike were around much earlier than Halo and used in eSports.

What Halo did however, was make consoles viable for eSports for the first time. LAN functionality helped there.

One of Microsoft's big issues has always been first party games.
But to be fair the reason why I owned an original Xbox was because of Halo and Fable.
Then the only reason I owned an Xbox 360 was for Halo 3 and Fable 2.
And now the only reason I own an Xbox One is Halo, but even that reason is starting to wane with the recent dropping of balls, Halo 5 was terrible, Halo: MCC was a bug ridden mess, Halo Wars 2 was okay.

With that in mind, Microsoft has collaborated with AMD and nVidia for decades, defining standards, inventing technology and pushing things forward thanks to Direct X. Without that, GPU technology would probably be very different today.

A graphics leap does lead to increased budgets. Believe it or not, a 1kx1k level of detail texture takes less time to make than a 4kx4k texture. And more time either means more hours or more workers.... which all mean more money spent. And thats just talking about textures......

Anyways, I dont agree with the article simply cause it seems to come off as if its saying console gaming is in need of saving somehow and what nintendo is doing with the switch is doing just that. Probably because i don't think the switch is a console in teh same vein as the PS4/XB1 to begin with. I do agree though that power alone isn't all that matters, and that the whole power thing will eventually become less and less relevant.

Since when was the Scorpio set for a release this summer?...

For the guys that like a good pissing competition, having the best graphics is always important

And interestingly enough, Sony very often wins that despite not having the most powerful system out there.

It doesn't take much budget to increase resolution and frame rate.

This article is a bit jumping the gun crowning Switch's strategy as the way forward when we still don't really know how users will react to Switch long term.

Scorpio is VR to the masses. Will probably have a occulus 2.0 bundle and push VR to mainstream and will be amazing. This analyst is just a nintendo fan and nothing more.

Switch is the most powerful mobile console, it is still about power.

Making games for scorpio and for the ps4 will cost the same, the only thing is that scorpio will have better lighting, physics and textures that are already created in the current console cycle, they only trim it down before downscaling to console limiting power.

The asset creation costs are will remain the same.

Breath of The Wild has a AAA budget bigger than most AAA games form ubisoft for example.

My reply in bold.

Uh, for most of these games the higher quality assets aren't already being made for PC versions of the game.

The idea that less power gives devs less to worry about and thus means more creative games is complete nonsense.