No that's the decision of the third parties. If they would like you to buy the $70 version they will try to lure you by either giving the $70 game more content OR decrease the quality of the $60 by a bit and with that I'm not only talking about worse graphics.

Either way the same point stands. Given the games popularity in the current gen consoles, if Activision decides to make a next-gen version with a lot of content (obviously more than just graphics) most people will not care about those contents, I honestly can't see someone paying that much cash (a new console + CoD) for a single game (unless of course you are a extreme hardcore CoD fan, but those are a minority). If the game is exclusive then that's a very different scenario, but then again it doesn't make sense financially to ignore the PS360 crowd. 

The PS4 and 720 will not be much in power above the current gen, insofar as they both can display realistic worlds in high-definition.

Um, if those rumours for PS4 are true, its GPU wil be at least some 9x as powerfull as 360 (which already has better GPU than PS3). How's that not much more in power above current gen?

No one said that it would be for a single game. Obviously third parties are not the ones to push a new system. That's the consoles manufacturer's job. And if someone owns both consoles there is a good chance that he will get the superior version for a few bucks more.

Lastly SW sales were slowing down by 13-14% for PS360 during 2012. This certainly affects new games (not just new IPs) because every year there are more games to choose from. Many newly released games won't be able to outsell their predecessors even though the userbase is larger. This trend will continue this year and especially next year. Third parties may support the old consoles as long as they wish, but there will be a time where doing a last gen port won't be able to generate enough sales to become important for them. That's a natural cycle.

1. We see here that the 8-core FX-8350 running at 4.0GHz has equal gaming performance with the dual-core i3-3225 that is what I would recommend for a reasonably low budget gaming PC. At 1.6GHz the performance is therefore 40% of a desktop dual-core.

2. AMD does not and will not have a faster gaming CPU on the market than the FX-8350 until at least 2014. Therefore the FX-8350 is an upper bound of what's possible in next-gen consoles, and since it's $200 even that is unlikely.

3. AMD does not have multi-threading tech. Even if it did, on current PC CPUs, the second thread adds about 5% to performance and subsequent threads do much less.

You're incorrectly assuming an AMD 'core' and an Intel (PC) 'core' are worth the same amount.

No, my only assumption is that given a GFlop performance, an 8-core CPU would out perform a dual-core CPU if all things were equal. Which I stated.

Well yes, but that's not possible here because the die size on such a thing would be far out of the power and cost bounds of these consoles.

You however, are making several assumptions that cannot be verified. I don't assume it's an AMD processor.It is entirely possible that the CPU if AMD is even the source for the manufacturing of it, could simply be the ones pressing the die. In other words, Microsoft or Sony is handing them a CPU design to press.

AMD do not own semiconductor manufacturing any more. AMD confirmed they are involved in the upcoming game consoles making something 'semi-custom' and in the'embedded' business segment. This means it is both CPU and GPU. We can consider it fact.

I also don't assume that a rumored processor speed will be the real speed.

Even if it's 4GHz it's still only the same as the dual-core. And 4GHz would blow the power budget.

Which means, I don't sit and try to divine the future based on rumor. How about this possibility? It's an IBM Power-based processor, coupled with additional ARM-based cores for specific application purposes, and AMD is the company doing the die pressing? Well that just screwed up your entire CPU debate didn't it?

Nope because AMD can't process and AMD already confirmed they're doing it.

I'm going to guess your too young to know that prior to building their own processors, AMD used to build Intel processors. Not Intel compatible processors, they were licensed by Intel to build processors because Intel didn't have the capacity to build as many processors as the market demanded. So using AMD as the fabricator for a CPU they didn't design wouldn't be unusual. Amazing, I know. Your mind must be blown.

Dude I tell people this story all the time. How do know that and not know they spun off their fabs a few years ago?

When we have detailed specs about the CPUs than we can debate performance, but right now, if all things are equal an 8-core processor would have higher performance than a dual-core CPU. Since you have no proof that all things aren't equal, except current CPU performance to price ratio charts, I'm not sure how this conversation can continue.

Since AMD IS doing the CPU, it's either worse than the thing from the chart (in which case I win) or better (in which case why the fuck isn't it on their desktop roadmap, it must be a miracle product doing more work in half the power given what we know about console form factors)

There are WAY too many assumptions being made to hamstring a processor that we don't even have real performance specs on.

We know who's making it, current and future desktop plans, and realistic limits on cost and power for a new console (namely, $400 and 200W for the entire console). From that I can say with confidence what the upper bound is on performance. You're right, I don't know exact specs, but that doesn't mean I know nothing.

Regardless of whether or not it's from Sony or Microsoft. I personally doubt Sony and Microsoft are using similar CPUs with the only difference really being the GPU. It would only serve to benefit developers, not either of the platform holders. The idea of both Microsoft and Sony's next generation consoles are to provide enough performance to easily get through the next seven years, if not get through the next ten. They won't be able to do that if the CPU performance can't match or significantly best that of the current PC CPUs.

In the past, maybe. Today though, a CPU that is better than current desktop CPUs is UNBELIEVABLY expensive. Think what Sony had to spend on the Cell, but 10x that. And even then they'd be power bound, so they'd need a completely new ahead of the surve semiconductor process to fab it on. We're talking $20b dollars as a starting point.

No, what they'll do (and I say this even if we knew nothing about it) is take an existing desktop or server CPU, cut it down to the 200W limit, and change up a few things to make it unique like the memory access. But it just can't be in the desktop PC range after you do that.

In case you think server means IBM, understand that POWER is much less energy efficient and much more expensive than PC so would need to be cut down even more to fit.

*Understand that desktop/server CPUs get to consume over 100W. This has to be more like 30W. Wii U is probably less than 10W. Good luck expecting it to match a desktop PC.

To get the most from their investment, to make the most profit, they need to extend the life of the console as long as possible. If the performance cannot match even that of the current PC CPUs, then it'll make either for a short generation or a shift from consoles to PCs. Consoles are too lucrative for either Sony or Microsoft to throw away the business to PCs. Even if 100% of the shift went to Windows PCs, Microsoft still makes more money on console games than they do on PC games. It doesn't make sense for either to throw the business away with a product that would be obsolete the day it was released. Neither the PS3 nor the Xbox 360 were that when they were released. They only became it over the life of the current generation.

The PS3 launched with a 79xx type card, which was obsoleted the November before launch by the 8800 series.