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NATO on 28 November 2017
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Intrinsic said:

i couldn't disagree more. like if you really think about it, the fate of the XBox brand right now is no longer in the hands of MS if they plan on still selling dedicated gaming hardware.

As I said in my initial post, this is flat out the worst gen for MS to drop the ball. off the top of my head here are a few reasons. 

 

  1. next gen we won't see remasters of current gen games. What we will have is hardware that are so much more powerful that they can brute Force everything (current gen games) to 4k Rez with better frame rates. instantly extending the value of any preexisting library. Hell.... being able to play all ur current gen games at higher Rez and framerates will be enough to make a some people upgrade just as we see now with the pro and X.
  2. if they launch day and date with the PS5 (or at least in the same window) then both consoles will be similar on the performance front. more on this in (3)
  3. the games. MS simply doesn't have them. Sony has spent the past 3 console generations acquiring studios. acquiring talent to make games. And Sony allows this talent artistic freedom to make whatever they want. this ain't something MS can just muster up in 3yrs. it took Sony almost 20yrs to get there. 
so if the consoles are priced the same, have the same hardware... the only thing that can differentiate them are the games. and that's something Sony has in spades. but even worse..... what reason would anyone have to leave the PS brand when all their games are playable and look better on the PS5. When all their favorite games will be getting new "exclusive" entries on the PS5. 
Take me for instance. and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I went all digital this gen. and even if you didn't, why leave the PS library and switch to the XB? why would anyone do that right now? what is the Xbox's Trump card gonna be? 
This was the gen for MS to build on what they did with the 360. They didn't. And now I fear the race isn't theirs to win anymore. it's Sony's to lose. And make no mistake, with how successful the PS4 has been for Sony, they will push to make as powerful a console as they can make... especially when considering the PS4pro and XB1X embarrassment, and even if it means them selling it at a $100 loss just to provenance the Next Xbox. that's what they will do. 

 

I just want to highlight a point here.

It makes sense for console manufacturers to stick with the current pc-like architecture, (x86/x64 instructions), it's cheaper for them to produce, less legwork in fully custom CPU/GPU, third parties can support it better and ports generally take significantly less time, a multitude of PC based game creation software, such as unreal, unity, etc can export in a format that runs directly, and of course, most developers don't have to re-learn a new architecture.

With that in mind, from this gen onwards, (for playstation and xbox), all future gens should be *directly* compatible with previous gen software, and run either exactly how they did on the previous gen hardware (minus as much slowdown issue or res drops in dynamic res titles), or full 4k in the case of titles that do up-to-4k via checkerboarding, it wouldnt even be considered backwards compatibility anymore, just "playstation compatible" or "xbox compatible", since any software from this gen onwards should, by rights, work just fine.

Also as ther PS3 highlighted, even with a 12-18 month delay on a playstation console launch, and the worst PR disaster in the history of PlayStation for the first year of the PS3, and of course, the considerably higher price tag than the competition, it was still able to pull neck and neck on the strength of the library alone.

I agree, if the next xbox and playstation launched at the same time, or even within 6 months of each other, the PlayStation would easilly outsell the Xbox worldwide with only the US being xbox's bastion.