My thoughts, after seeing the PS4 Pro, and the probable reality of the Scorpio, are that these mid-gen consoles are counterproductive. There will be more time trying to balance games between the basic and enhanced game modes, problems have already emerged in weird and bizarre ways, marketing is strange, there are arbitrary elements kept in place design-wise that artificially limit what a real generation change could be, etc.
Both Sony and Microsoft more than showed that GOOD developers could get adequate to outstanding results at 900p to 1080p on the 2013 models.
IMHO, they should have ridden out the 8th gen until ~2018-2019, and then launch a full generation leap.
By waiting, the power leap DEFINITELY could have allowed for reasonable 4K performance AND still be fully BC.
In other words : PS5 and Xbox 9th gen games are for those systems only, and don't have to be hobbled to old/weak 8th gen base hardware in scale and settings.
Hell, limiting MP to 30fps will be a hideous mark of this error moving forward, particularly with the Scorpio, just to maintain parity with hardware that will be 4 years old at that time.
The slims, fine, yeah die-shrink, price cut, increase profits, and extend the gen. All fine. With extremely mature dev tools, they could have definitely squeezed out a couple-three more years out of base gen8 before leapfrogging in a big way.
These half-gen consoles also potentially cripple a gen9 release as well, because people investing in gen8/gen8+ consoles in the latter years of this gen will be hesitant to turn right around and buy yet another console so soon.
It's greedy, it's stupid, and it defies the simplicity and economic model of console generations. What say you?
