The decision to give the Xbox 360 wireless controllers was a last minute one.

Last minute changes worked out so well for the 360

Yeah, I'll believe it when I see it.

The real problem is that unlike Sony going from 2 GB to 4 GB and finally 8 GB, 12 GB is not an even power of two. The only easy explanation for how they could change the amount of RAM this late in the game would be if they had a memory slot the X1 was designed to use, but for some strange reason was left empty.

Besides, I'm not entirely convinced "more is better" with RAM. My PC rig has a paltry 6 GB, and task manager confirms I seldom use more than 4, often with stuff running in the background. I expect RAM--like other electronic components--hits a diminishing returns wall somewhere between 2 and 8 GB. Less than two and you'll hit memory limits all the time, more than 8 and you're going to have developers making spaghetti code.

At this point I'm pretty convinced the X1 is this generations most numerically powerful gen 8 console already. I'm just not sure that will amount to anything.

Never too late to make the change IMO. Why wouldn't you want to maximize the minimum set up of your gaem system. It won't help the firs 2 years, but years 3-7/10 it would. Like many others have said, it can't hurt to have more ram. I agree with others that it will help 1st party a few years down the line for sure. Seems funny that so many people can't grasp that this was probably an option for them all along in the design. They probably chose to save some costs and go 8gb when they thought that Sony was only 4gb. Once Sony housed them at the reveals, they have been scrambling ever since to maximize what they can. Either way, it would be nice if its 12, but it does seem less likely to be reality.

well they are trying to market it from living room to board room.  voice conferencing, kinect guide presentations, etc.. makes sense 

The more ram the more better.

More RAM ?

Do you smell that?

Are you comparing the addition of a simple controller is the same to adding 4 gb of ram to a console that is merely 3-4 months from launching? Oh btw, how did some of those last minute changes turn out for the Xbox 360? Seemed like a reliable console at the time.

The PC doesn't equate to a console in regards to memory usage, the PC is doing *far* more just in the background than a console ever has to manage, which makes sense, because the PC is the most flexible and powerfull platform available.

Plus, the PC has multiple memory pools, you have your System Ram, which may be 6Gb, but on top of that you also have your Video cards Ram which today is usually around 2-6Gb in size.

On a console the video and system memory are one in the same this time around, thus if you were to compare say... The PS4 to a PC a developer might use 4Gb of that ram for GPU operations, leaving 3Gb for other tasks and 1Gb for the OS, suddenly that 8Gb of Ram doesn't sound like allot when you compare it to my 32Gb of System Ram and 9Gb of total video card memory. (3Gb is the max usable in games, however with compute I can use the whole 9Gb.)

You also can't forget that these machines are expected to last a decade without any changes in the hardware, what might seem "somewhat decent" today... Will seem paltry and pathetic in 5-10 years time. (Hence my wanting for better hardware in all the consoles.)