Remember back at E3 2013 when Don Mattrick revealed the always-online Xbox One with its non-shareable games? That event nearly demolished the Xbox brand altogether, and it's taken three years for the company to put the pieces back together. Sony won this current generation simply by doing the complete opposite of Microsoft and listening to its consumer base. Now the roles have been reversed--Sony's new PlayStation 4.5 is the company's pre-E3 2013 Xbox One, and Microsoft has found itself in a very advantageous position to steal this generation.

Microsoft has a singular advantage over Sony: the new Windows 10 Dev Mode. This new tool allows devs to make a single game that's playable on both PC and Xbox, alleviating the need for multiple ports. Sony's PlayStation 4.5, on the other hand, is a nightmare for devs because they now have to make two PS4 ports of every game, meaning multi-plat will need four ports (PS4, PS4.5, Xbox One, and PC). Every PS4 game released after October needs to have two versions--a PS4 and a PS4.5 flavor that supports 4K upscaling. As a result of this news, the new PS4.5 is pissing off lots of devs, and BioWare's co-founder even went so far as to say its a "gigantic pain in the ass".

http://www.tweaktown.com/news/51730/microsoft-unique-position-disrupt-sonys-console-reign/index.html

Universal windows Platform Apps? thats the "unique position to disrupt Sony's console reign"?

^ this.

Install base is too big to just ignore.

If porting games to too many places is a issue, its almost more likely they would just drop the Xbox Ports (its not going to happen either).

They will just make all the ports they need (Xbox One, PS4 and PS4 neo).

There are no nice things I can say about the thought process here. If anyone actually thinks Microsoft isn't preparing to do something similar as we speak today, you're out of touch. Sony is not going to suffer a single dollar because of this.

I think Sony did that all by them self, enter PS4.5 NEO, stupid move Sony.

They're more likely to put the most effort into the PS4 version and rely entirely on dev mode for the XB1 version. At the end of the day though, this is exactly what MS want them to do. PC is the future for MS.

Devs will just release the one version for PS4 and say well it runs on PS4.5 so that is fine. Only a few real big games and Son'y 1st party will bother full upgrading games to the PS4.5 specs.

Devs aren't allowed to do that.

It will not be 2 ports for PS4 and PS4.5. I've seen this a few times. It's not developing for 2 different systems.. Its the same game with better optimizations for the PS4.5. Considering so many games are downgraded (optimized) to run better on the PS4 it would just allow developers to have a little better game on the PS4.5. And as of right now the Xbox Dev Kit mode is only for APPS.. We will not be seeing "games" for a long time, if EVER.

So basically we will never see a single Indie game on PS4 ever again as the standard PS4 version will look the exact same on PS4.5.

Unified development tool so they can release their game exclusively for Windows store on PC. They must be thrilled.