Is the Xbox Scorpio coming too late? Or is MS trying to reinvent console gens?

[Nautilus]

Intrinsic said:
First off, i don't understand how this is something MS is doing. Especially being that we dont know when the darn consoles are coming out.

Secondly, not only do i believe both MS and Sony are going to come next year i also feel its a perfect time for a refresh.

Lastly, i feel they are both trying to adopt an iterative 3-4yr gen cycle going forward and we will see total forward and backward compatibility across generations. We can't call them shorter gens since the previous consoles will still be able to play all the new games. I really dont see what is disruptive about this approach, if anything I'm more surprised it took them this long to do it.

I've always found the concept of spending years accumulating 10s of millions of subscribers only to hit the reset button every 5-7yrs and do it all again as an extremely stupid but at the time necessary facet of the console business. Fortunately, games are such that they are now more about scalability instead of generational limitations. I mean lets not kid ourselves, I'm sure they could hsve gotten the withcer 3/fall out 4/uncharted 4 to run on the 360/PS3 if they needed to. It would look like shit, but its not impossible.

The problem with this line of thinking is that eventually a gen leap is going to be needed and(lets say) the PS4 wont be able to play games in the PS5.Why?Because the power difference betwenn hardwares are going to be too big.Even in PCs, where you have more options about the games performance, you still need a PC that has X requirements to run a game on the lowest setting.There is a difference in making compromises to make the game run on older systems and being actually impossible to port since making these compromises would essentially make that game into another game(lower number of enemies, lower effects, bad graphics, you get the idea.).So this idea of itineration, in the sense that if you get a console now it will last 15 years, is simply ridiculous.Eventually you will need to upgrade.The same happens to the smartphone market after all.

And I mean, if we have already problems with developers making broken games on current consoles, imagine when they have to make 2 ports, one with better specs and the other with worse specs, and try to imagine whats going to happen.I mean, we actually have proof.Just look at Black Ops 3 current gen and last gen.And the argument that " as long as the install base in the older hardware is big enough, they will make a good port" is simply wrong, again with Black Ops 3, since last gen had way bigger install base than the current one.Dont fool yourselfs:Sony may have said that they will control qulity and all, and that may very well happen for the first year or so, but what if the Neo or scorpio starts selling really well?Do you really think that Sony or the other third party developers will care that much about complains, when they will be selling more than enough on the latest itinerations?