"I'd say that'd be a gigantic pain in the ass that flies in the face of the purpose of consoles," he said. "It's funny, there's actually some stories behind that. For example, the original Xbox...Microsoft actually had multiple different DVD drives. They didn't tell anyone that, but as a developer you discovered that you have different performance and sometimes you'd have these boxes of refurbished drives and different brands and different equipment. It caused incredible variability."
Zeschuk went on to say the benefit of having locked system specs as consoles currently do is that it's clear to developers what they are working with.
"The whole purpose of consoles is the set of requirements that you work against from a hardware perspective," he said. "To change that is complete lunacy."
The discussion around a mid-cycle hardware upgrade stems back most recently to the beginning of March. At an industry event, Xbox boss Phil Spencer was quoted as saying, "You'll actually see us come out with new hardware capability during a generation." He didn't say this generation, however. Still, it's an interesting development, and one that Zeschuk says may come from Microsoft feeling as if its Xbox One was outmatched from a technical perspective compared to the PlayStation 4.
"It's almost like Microsoft may feel that Sony got overpowered versus them at the start, and maybe wants to kind of catch up," he said. "And Sony's like, 'Well, if you want to do that, we'll play this game.'"
Whatever the reason, Zeschuk isn't on board with the idea.
Full articlle: http://www.gamespot.com/articles/bioware-founder-on-ps4xbox-one-upgrades-itd-be-a-g/1100-6438664/
"I just think it's bad," he said. "I think, 'lock it' and let developers do their thing. But at the end of the day, if you can focus your development effort on one set of hardware requirements and target, you are going to get a better result. It's easier than having to split it, adding more people, having to port things across."
"It's like dipping your toe back into the PC pool where you have to consider all these things. It was nice on console not having to consider like performance sliders. But it's just crazy. I guess maybe [Microsoft and Sony] feel the need to."
