256GB SSD right now is around $42. In 2020 that could be as little as $15 or $20 and If being soldered onto the board it will probably cost sony/ms less than $10. 

Now adding a HDD in there too will probably cost them another $25 or so for a 2TB drive in 2020. So thats a total storage budget of about $30-$35. But then that same amount will net them around 1TB of SSD storage soldered directly onto the board. 

This is why I keep saying that unless capacity is the absolute priority then they would just go with an SSD on the board than any other storage solution. And i think 1TB of superfast storage has a better ring to it than 2TB HDD.

One thing for certain though is that by 2020 they will be able to put 1TB of storage directly on the board. If current SSD prices are any indication. 

I believe they will both support ray tracing on some level somehow. But I have shifted from my initial expectation of there being an M.2 interface and SSD. 

Its cheaper to just build the storage directly onto the MB and still get Peak SATA speeds for storage (550MB/s+). And no, games don,t need anything more than that. Just look at speed tests between games running from and nvme drive and a sata drive.

And there is nothing special with what google is doing. They are also pushing for a streaming platform. I find it strange how people forget that sony already has a streaming platform. Since the start of this gen.

Problem is that they really would prefer to not have anything below MS at the start of the gen for then to take cheapshots.

If they can put 1TB SSD for the same price of 128GB SSD and 2TB HDD then sure it's a much better solution. But if they go and have a console at launch that is 128 or 256GB SSD it will be seem as downgrade from this gen and much inferior to a Xbox with 2TB HDD for the casual buyer and also be pushed in marketing.

I wouldn't mind paying 500-600 USD on the console if all that budget is used to put the best components on price benefit to push for best possible graphics in budget, but it'll be hard to see over 399 launch from Sony.

I really don't think hard drive size could ever be used as a reason to buy a console. Ever.

If anything the fact one is an SSD and the other is a HDD and one is faster and the other is slower will make for more relevant talking points. When there are videos of games loading in half the time on one console vs the other no one will say " takes twice as long to load but at least you can store twice as many games at once though".

I think the most the consoles can cost will be $499. And even that may be pushing it.

I honestly wouldn't be surprised if we see a $399 SKU without a disc drive and 1TB of storage and a $499 sku with the disc drive and 2TB of storage. And then have an external disc drive as an accessory for around $79. 

I've been pondering this too. PS5 is doable, but there seems to be too much question about what the right direction to take is and what the launch price should be. GDDR6 will even be quite new since Nvidia cards just launched with it. GDDR5 was first seen on ATI (AMD) cards in 2008, and consoles didn't see it until 2013, and only for PS4. CPU and GPU wouldn't really be an issue at all though. For the next couple of years, some tech will be transitioning at a time that isn't really beneficial to a console generational transition.

PS did say they were going to crouch down once more before they grow after fiscal 2020 (March 2021). This could mean another process shrink so PS4 28nm-> PS4+Pro 16nm-> PS4+Pro 4k 10nm. Launch a PS4 SS and a new Pro 4K. Spec it at 6-8TF, 12-16GB GDDR5, 8 custom advanced jaguar cores at around 2.5GHz, with a 2TB HDD, and price it at $399 again. A 4k/30 console quite similar to the XB1X to directly compete for another 2 or 3 years before next gen drops.

The problem I see with this, is it will make marketing the PS5 even tougher because if Pro 4k can typically hit full 4k, then PS5 would have to rely much more on things like 60fps and ray tracing. Unless they push for 5k or something like that. This would allow PS5 to launch holiday 2021 or later and would make the next hardware leap a much more straightforward decision. With the XB typical 4 year cycle, that would mean a 2021 launch for Scarlet as well. It would basically be a 'year early' for PS5 but PS could then definitely price it at $499 and make it a worthy jump for the loyalists and spec heads.

With the 'year of radio silence' coming up, it makes me think there's little chance they could be planning on extending this gen beyond 2020, unless they have a handful of games they are building up to announce alongside another PS4 upgrade. Pro did skip e3 though and was announced later in 2016, so why deviate for a Pro 4k reveal in 2019?

If games are built with NVMe in every unit, then they will take advantage of it. If not, then they are limited to the weakest compnent. 

I think having the Storage built into the board, with a NVMe Expansion slot would be a great way to go. Give me 1TB of Storage with 3000MB/s Read Speed/2000MB/s Write Speed, and let me slip in an upgrade as needed. A NVMe slot is an extremely cheap addition, and would allow users to upgrade as needed, without the need for a bulky external storage unit. 

Built in Storage Expansion, and Built in VR. Two less USB and Power plugs, and one less HDMI needed for PS5. That is next gen to me. 

I have no doubt PS4 Super Slim and PS4 Pro Slim are coming next year with 7nm APUs. I think it is unlikely that they do anything major with them though. Super Slim may have 4K media capabilities, just to keep it relevent, as it will basically be competeting with Amazon Fire TV, Roku 4K, Nvidia Shield, and AppleTV at the $149.99 - $199.99 price point. Otherwise, I just see them as smaller, cheaper versions of the current consoles, to reach a wider audience, and maintain PS4 sales well into the PS5 life cycle.

If they do end up making the Pro Slim a true 4K PS4, then I would be pretty excited though. I think a 4K PS4 in 2019 on 7nm, followed by PS5 on 7nm+ in 2021 would be the ultimate play. Best of both worlds, PS4 finishes strong, while PS5 brings full next gen tech all around. 

I'm not going to count on that though. I think it is just slimmed down PS4 and PS4 Pro for 2019, with PS5 in 2020. Hopefully, a PS5 that digs deep to and delivers a forward looking design, even if Sony has to eat a little cost for the first 12 - 18 months.

Thats not how the whole Nvme thing works though.

Between the APU and the components on a motherboard. There are usually two bridges. North and southbridge respectively. The north bridge is usually a connection point between the APU, RAM and its supported PCiE lanes ad the south is usually connected to the Northbridge and hosts things like USB, Drives....etc basically the slower stuff.

Now the bridge on the PS4/XB1 was basically a SATA 3 bridge. This has a peak bandwidth of 600MB/s, that meant that everything on those consoles shared that bandwidth. Its why when using a SSD in  PS4/XB1 you still don't get the peak SSD speeds. 

With the next gen consoles we can hope or expect that the bridge they use this time around is a PCIE gen 3 4 lane equivalent bridge. That will give us around 4GB/s bandwidth for everything in the console to share. This is storage, drives, USB.....etc. With that, even when using an Nvme based o2 drive you still won't be able to max it out and will probably get at most 1GB/s of bandwidth. Which is still aout 10 times better than what we have now though.

Another thing to consider is that even if the M.2 interface they use supports Nvme SSDs (so its a PCIEx4 interface) Nvme SSDs cost significantly more than a normal SSD on an M.2 drive (and the latter will also work in such an interface). And that is a cost that hasn't shown to be a benefit so far when it comes to games because of what actually makes up game data (long story). 

Its also worth mentioning that a motherboard with PCIE support will cost more to make than one without it.

Now even if we are getting the hardware for nvme M.2 drives...... the best we will absolutely get is a sata 3 SSD in that slot.

For subscription and software sales they would like to support the console as much as they can. Since Spiderman bundle at 199$ is doing so well. They would like to sell Pro slim for that in few years time as well. I think they will reach 120M. But will be surprised if it last more than 2022.

That could be another way to look at the crouch down once more before growing after March 2021. If they just go with PS4 SS and Pro S, and also launch PS5 late 2019 or early 2020, if they are going to implement some of the tech that's being talked about here, it will probably mean more than just a tiny subsidy, which may put them in the red for PS5 for the first year. To put it simply, if they create a $500 console, and launch it at $399, that's anticipated to drop in price fairly quickly, they can hopefully get the cost down $50 to $100 by 2021, and break even at that point, so no more losses and only gains from then on.

That would work too, but I think PS5 would still be seen as a next gen console that really wasn't quite next gen. A 'next gen ready' edition you could almost call it. The Pro model down the road would be able to implement everything fully and see the greatest benefits, which could possibly lead to more people waiting to jump into next gen, or more people willing to upgrade, which could end up meaning a more even ratio than the 5 to 1 that exists now. In order for PS5 to fully fit next gen around 2020, I'd assume they would need to aim for $600 and sell it for $499, but that would mean holding that retail price for years, or continuing that $100 subsidy, at least until they hit $399 retail, then they could hold for quite a while.

In Microsoft and Nintendo's case, they did go for the cheapest.

I recognize that sometimes they will opt for more expensive hardware, what I am trying to say is that consoles have a budget, they aren't going to break through that budget... And sometimes a console manufacturer might make a priority of one component over another... Case in point the Playstation 4 prioritized Ram over the CPU.

But...  Even though they might choose something which is a little more expensive, doesn't mean it's high-end.

The Playstation 3 was a unique beast as Sony went all out on everything. - Did they really need to include the PS2 components when software emulation could have been sufficient?
Did they really need to spend an obscene amount of money on a CPU when a CPU more along the lines of what the Xbox 360 had would have been perfectly sufficient?
Did they really need to opt for their expensive memory setup?
Did they really need to include a card reader?

...And the price was reflected in that, to the point where some people needed a second job to afford such a console.

It wasn't until the PS3 went on a diet and cut out allot of that rubbish that it became more tenable for the masses, that was the big lesson that Sony learned with the Playstation 3.

Because that has worked so well for them so far?