I'm not sure if such a plan is very logical.
What are the realistic benefits?
- Some games, the ones optimized for this method, would look better on the 2.0 version and possibly run smoother if there were earlier overhead problems on the 1.0 version.
What else? If the plan is full forwards- and backwards compatibility then substantial upgrades would be meaningless. More RAM, for example, would have little real benefit since new games would still have to run on the old configuration. The games would have to be built and structured around the same limitations.
What are the potential negatives?
- No price drops unless Microsoft is willing to manufacture separate SKUs for awhile. If they do not run separate SKUs then the people who wait on price-drops would probably look elsewhere.
- Assuming Microsoft never increases the price past the launch price, the margins are just too low to allow for much of an upgrade without losing money. Keep in mind that R&D and manufacturing costs would spike with every new "version", so we're not simply talking about hardware costs.
- Product confusion. Never underestimate the potential of consumers to be confused. Most people do not follow gaming news on a daily or weekly basis. It would be difficult and expensive to keep consumers educated.
- The potential of people on the 1.0 systems to get shafted. It will end up happening at least once or twice, where someone comes out and says, "you need the upgraded version to get the true experience," which is developer talk for, "it runs like crap on the old configuration and we don't really care."
- If this resulted in longer generations with more "upgrades" inside that are fully forwards/backwards compatible, then it could effectively retard game development even more. If Microsoft had two upgrade periods, that would be about 9 years of life for the original platform, for which all games would still have to work. Every three years does not feel realistic.
As for upgradeable consoles, please, no. Many of the people who buy consoles over PC do so because they can't or don't want to deal with technical issues. Even worse, there would be more generational fracturing, which always leads to confusion.
Part of me wonders if Microsoft just wants to fix the eSRAM issue and get something better in place while using this as an excuse.
It could also be mostly PR with a tiny dose of reality. Rather small upgrades with a ton of ballyhoo that are meant more to draw attention from the "core gamer" than they are to make any real difference.
There are a lot of different scenarios. We'll just have to wait and see how it plays out.
