I agree with you but I think you are getting things mixed up a bit. I don't think consoles "chase" graphics. Since sony got into the business and MS after, their has been a viable tried and true business model that works. With consoles, it is possible to put $500/$600 hardware in a $400 box and because of its closed and standardized nature, its possible to have that $400 box give you the performance of a PC that costs twice as much (in theory at least). 

The people chasing graphics are the PC ethusiast, these are the people that seem to think that more pixels and higher framrate is synonymous with a good gaming experience. In truth, if sony or MS believed that were true and the majority of gamers in the world too, they would have made consoles that cost $1000 and we all would have been climbing over ourselves to buy it. Ever wondered why nvidia never comes out and say hey, this is exactly how many GPUs we sell every year. Whatthey will do however is tell you that they have a revenue of the year for about $3Bl. Now lets assume that all that comes from selling CPU gpus (which it doesnt) and the average cost of a GPU is $400 thats a total of 7.5ml gpus sold per year to gamers. These ae very loose numbers cause I am not even taking into account that that number includes Tegra mobile sales, laptop PCs and then actual dsktop GPUs.  Nor taking into account the rotational nature of the PC elite upgrade path.

Having said all that, I think that with consoles, what we get is the minum best that can be put into a box at the time of a generational jump while taking the competition into consideration. Think of it this way, in 2019/2020 which is when I expect the next consoles to hit the market, what can a platform hlder put in a box for $400? Its a natural progressing of tech. In 2020, 16GB-32GB of GDDR5/6 ram, 1TB SSD, and a cpu/gpu that is at least 8-10 times more powerful than what you have in the PS4/XB1 now will cost around $4-$500. Thats just how technology works.

I didn't say the GPU will replace the CPU. "They are still very important for a few tasks." However I predict CPUs in next gen consoles will not be significantly stronger than the ones used in 4BONE. Instead the the GPU will receive the bulk of the upgrade, making an incredibly lopsided system by today's standards.

@Intrinsic
You have to keep in mind that we're talking about something 6 years from now. ARM processors will continue to rapidly evolve as the mobile industry moves forward. By 2020 it'll be a completely different market. I'd predict the average consumer PC on store shelves will use ARM. Only gaming rigs and other high end setups will stick with x86. It'd be too expensive and unnecessary for 9th gen systems to go with those high end x86 CPUs, so they'd use ARM.

As far as RAM goes, this is again an example of people being blinded by the present. 2020 is a long time from now. Every PlayStation console has increased their RAM amount 16x from the previous generation. 8GB for PS4, 512 MB for PS3, 32 MB for PS2, and 2 MB for PS1. 128 GB for the next system is very realistic.

The reason you don't use extra memory for the OS is that it limits the console. These systems need to be dynamic throughout their lives, and on a title by title basis. It's the reason consoles have switched to unified memory. Physically segregating a chunk of the ram without reason for the OS would be a step backwards.

I'm more interested to know what is needed to get ray tracing to work at 1080p60.
Or get fully deformable living worlds with realistic behaving materials.
Just going for 4k60 with today's bag of tricks doesn't sound very exciting.

That would be following the current trend, since PS4 and X1 have a massive GPU upgrade and only moderate CPU increase.

Yup, especially in the PS4's case since the PS3 used CELL.

Oops, I thought this thread was about the future of the industry, not fantasy PC building.

I see myself out before I make predictions that might upset some people.

Despite the dev difficulties drawback, it was a beast of a CPU.

True, but it was just too complicated. Consoles wil never completely do away with a GPU though... its more likely that we may never need a CPU that is more than twice or thrice as powerful as what we have now in the PS4/XBO.

This is soooooo not a PC building thread. 

Is it reasonable to assume next gen (except Nintendo) will have Photo realistic graphics? I've seen a few people predict that photo realistic graphics will be normal for next gen (PS5, X2, and PC) around 2020 to 2022.