No, they were never meant to be played sitting 13ft away from the screen.

Why do you think wired console controllers were usually ~6 feet long?

You watch tv, 6ft away from your tv?

~7 foot / 2 meters. Much better immersion due to the bigger field of view.

I want at least 30° (SMPTE recommendation), that is 2.23 m / 7.3 feet with a 55'' TV. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Society_of_Motion_Picture_and_Television_Engineers

The THX recommendation for the "best-seat-to-screen-distance" is even 40°, that is 1.67 m / 5.5 feet with a 55'' TV.

Still making assumptions and you know very well that neither Sony nor MS can push limits at launch. 

Game Pass is for people who are tired of wasting money buying games and selling them for a fraction 2 weeks later. It’s for people who want the most games for the least $$$. It’s for gamers with the will power to not buy games at launch.

I beat last year alone Forza Horizon 4, Metro Trilogy, Kingdom Come Delieverence, Gears 5, Quantum Break, Sea of Thieves, Hellblade, Outer Worlds, Wolfenstein 1/2, Rage 2, Sniper Elite 4, Crackdown 3. Recore.

All games I was interested in but didn’t feel justified paying upfront. I am glad I played them (some more then others). More then paid for my sub....it just makes sense. So I assure you are wrong about GP. It is a core games service for core gamers. Just because you can’t relate doesn’t mean it’s not for core gamers. Maybe if you stopped buying all your new games upfront you could actually get some value from it

Why wouldn’t the Series X be their focus? When it launches it will be the poster child of the Xbox brand. “Most power” this and that...MS wants you to know Xbox has the power. 

Lockhart is for budget adopters and Xbox 1 gets the low end versions. PC is just there...not like MS gonna heavily advertise the PC version. And Game Pass is only a service MS wants you to get once you buy into the Xbox brand....which Series X would be the ideal console Ms wants you to buy (newest/most expensive)

Cant stress enough since Xbox X came out MS can’t stop telling us that they have the power. You couldn’t be more wrong.

I'm not saying GP on and by itself is bad. Of course, it does offer good value when you can play MS exclusives like Halo and Gears on day one, for $1. My problem is that it isn't just a service they have on the side like PsNow, it's their main focus for next gen. They're running with a very pc-centric approach, where they want to reach the main stream pc, Xone, X1X and Lockhart gamers. The Series X is just there for people who want that "plus-plus-plus" like native 4k/60fps, and a bump in graphics settings, just like $2000 gaming pc's are now. But they're not going to release games that push the Series X to it's limits at 1080p/30fps, because that defeats the whole purpose of reaching as many gamers as possible with GP.

What's probably important to realize here is that ps5 exclusives will likely be build from the ground up to push the hardware at a targeted 1080p/(and mostly)30fps. Resolution should, and will not, be something console developers will focus on when designing on the base platform. Because resolution isn't that noticeable when you're gaming on a tv, especially with things like dynamic resolution and checkerboard rendering. The Order 1886 even had black bars just so they could get that kind of visual fidelity on screen with an early ps4 game. And the Switch has games that run in 540p and people are fine with it, saying what an amazing port games like the Witcher 3 or Hellblade are. 

Building their exclusives around main stream pc-specs isn't the end of the world a couple of years in the console cycle. Because by then the average gaming pc will be far more powerful than the Series X or ps5. The only thing I'm saying is that we don't know how long that will take. In the mean time we won't be seeing MS exclusives that truly take full advantage of the Series X's hardware. Instead, we will likely just see the same games as on Xone with an extra layer of paint, native 4k and hell, even 120fps by the looks of it.  

And more assumptions from you.

You know that more and more people are buying 4K TVs and that Sony will be very interested in selling as much 4K TVs of their own brand as possible (which are also supporting 60 or even 120 Hz frequencies).

Also 30 fps was a foul compromise due to the bad CPU-part of the Jaguar APU. Do you really think that Sony's new PlayStation games will again target 30 fps with a much better CPU in the PS5?

And all that for people who are sitting 13 feet away from the TV with a field of view of 20 degrees or less, so that they can't see the advantages of a higher resolution?

Additionally: if you aren't interested in higher resolutions than 1080p and better responsive due to 60 fps, you are the perfect candidate for streaming services.

Here they can put all their processing power into effects, ai, etc. instead of image quality: A game running in insane settings with perfect raytracing and supersmart AI and all that stuff (impossible to render on current consumer hardware) could theoretically be rendered in the data computing centers of Microsoft/Amazon/Google and the send as a Steam to the client. The necessary bandwith for a "perfect" 1080p/60fps stream wouldn't be any different to a 1080p/60fps stream in "good enough"-settings.

Of course putting that much processing power into the benefit of single clients today is still too expensive for Microsoft/Google/Sony if they care a bit about the profitibility of these streaming services. But in the future they could offer something like this as an option for enthusiasts (and rich people): "pay $100 instead of $10 per month for the streaming service and you'll get games with the combined CPU+GPU power of 10 RTX 30*0/PS5/XSX  instead of 1 RTX 30*0/PS5/XSX".

It's just how game development works on consoles. Online FPS games will probably target 60fps but most story driven, slow paced games will be 30fps. They will make the games so they look the best on the platform and resolution often is the least important. I mean if you look at BF4, it was running on 720p on the 360 as well as the Xone and there are still a ton of 720 and 900p games on the Xone. 

PC gamers always talk about native 4k and 120fps like it should be standard. But that's just pc-elitists talking and if you look at the Steam Hardware survey, over 90% of the pc gamers are using 1080p or a lower resolution. My guess is that will see 1080p or 1440p as the standard on next gen but definitely not native 4k, unless we're talking remasters.

First you need to change “Reach as many gamers as possible” to “convert as many gamers as possible”. MS wants you to buy less games and instead put your money into a subscription so they see where your money is going. Instead of me spending money on those games I listed at a store, I give MS a steady income via Game Pass. That’s the point. It’s a core game service for core gamers sick of spending too much on games and being disappointed/having to trade them in at a loss. 

Sounds like your issue is with MSs marketing department because hey choose to push GP more then Sony pushes PSNow. Again that’s a odd complaint when all their core offerings are still there. 

Saying that GP impacts the games design is outright trolling. And for all your optimism o n PS5 and pessimism on Xbox....you still can’t argue that they will ultimately be in the same position because neither company makes full use in the first year. MS simply gonna make more money selling to PC and XB1 gamers in the process.  

It's just how game development had to work on consoles this console generation due to the disproportion of CPU and GPU performance... and that disproportion only got worse with the PS4 Pro and the Xbox One X. With PS5 and XSX they are fixing that to a much more sensible ratio between CPU and GPU performance, hopefully producing a much bigger share of 60 fps games or 40 - 60 Hz/fps VRR games.

Slow paced story driven games doesn't scream "true next gen experience" or "not possible on the old gen with a few graphic compromises" to me.

And any game genre which isn't slow paced would profit from the better responsiveness which fps above 30 bring with them: first person shooters (no matter if online or offline!), third person shooters, racing games, action games like GTA, fighting games, platformers, sport games, action-rpgs like Diablo, brawlers, RTS...

Also every TV set of the last two decades supports 60 Hz (and therefore also 60 fps games)... with 30 fps games half of their potential is wasted. And with the new HDMI2.1 standard both PS5 and XSX will support variable refresh rate on compatible TVs. So developers don't even have to decide anymore between fixed 30 fps or fixed 60 fps, they can offer compromises like f.e. 40 - 60 Hz/fps VRR, which will feel a lot more responsive than locked 30 fps, aren't as taxing as locked 60 fps and give more wiggle room for short slowdowns.

Another point: Your preferences for "true next gen experiences" always include raytracing as mandatory. You know that...

• it is only eyecandy (just like higher resolutions, better textures, better antialiasing or better post-processing gfx) and doesn't change gameplay or level complexity/size in any way
• it is very taxing to performance, even more taxing than resolution bumps
• it can be turned on and off

So it is another great toggle for scalability and offering options. Some PS5 or XSX users will prefer 1080p with raytracing enabled, others will prefer 4K without raytracing (which one looks better will depend on the skill of the developers and the viewing distance from the TV of the individual gamer). Or 30 fps in raytracing mode vs. 60 fps in performance mode. 

The chances are also good that 60 fps games with raytracing on will run well on PS4 / Xbox One with 30 fps and raytracing off in crossgen games.