Why the Xbox 720 and PS4 will have a RAM of 4 GB

[KBG29]

superchunk said:

Salnax said:

Generation	Nintendo	Sega	Sony	Microsoft	Average
3	4.5 KB 1983	24 KB 1983	N/A	N/A	14 KB        1983
4	256 KB 1990 +56.8x 7 years	136 KB 1988 +5.6x 5years	N/A	N/A	196 KB 1998 +14x 5 years
5	4 MB 8MB Expansion Required 1996 +32x 6 years	5 MB 1994 +37x 6 years	3.5 MB 1994	N/A	4.2 MB 1994 21x 6 years
6	43 MB 2001 +10.75x 5 years	26 MB 1998 +5.2x 4Years	38 MB 2000 +10.85 6years	64 MB 2001	43 MB 1998 +10.23x 4 years
7	91 MB 2006 +2.11x 5 years	N/A	512 MB 2006 +13.47x 6years	522 MB 2005 +8.15x 4 years	375 MB 2005 +8.72x 7 years
8	2 GB 2012 +22x 6 Years	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

The pattern is simplier than you suggest and the Wii to WiiU jump is just as modest as it was previously.

Its roughly a 10x jump in each iteration with the exception of Nintendo, which has moved to a 2x jump. Since both MSony were near .5GB then they will be around 5GB as a best case argument. But i don't think its as linear as this suggests; PS2 to PS3 was larger than 10x.

While I contend the systems will use 4GB as that makes the most logical sense, the rumors currently suggest closer to 6GB as the dev kits have had 8GB reportedly.

The whole idea that 4GB is the sweet spot for gen 8 just kills me.

No gen has ever seen an increase of 1x per year between consoles. Even including the monkey wrench gen that included the Wii, the average is 2.52x per year.

No gen has ever seen a company go more than 7 years between consoles. This gen Microsoft will go at least 8 years. 

The one time a company went 7 years between systems, the next platform had 56x more RAM (I don't see this happening).

Based on history, the changing market, and more current generation, I expect a minimum of a 2x increase in RAM per year between consoles. That would put the PS4 and XB3 at, at least 16x more RAM than the PS3/360. That would put them at 8GB. What I would really like to see is 10GB considering that the next gen consoles will be much more OS heavy, thus allowing plenty of OS overhead, and a true 16x performance increase dedicated to the games.