Nope. This isn't just the case. And I don't know how many times I could day it before it sinks in. Developers aren't supporting 2/3/4 different systems. They are supporting One system with 3-4 different settings. It's up to Sony to make that process smoother. Developers are working with ONE SDK. 

The reason the last generation lasted so long is exactly what makes this necessary. There is just too much time between technological jumps now. And there is no confusion here. You aren't walking into a store as a consumer and wondering which PS4 game to buy. You still just buy a game and toss it in. 

And this developers and publishers argument. That just tells me you didn't read my OP or he article I linked whch was in fact made by a developer. But I'll say this. APIs. 

Its pretty much now a fact that a more powerful PS4 is making its way to devs. and devs have spole about it. Devs kits are even with them. How is this still a sumor to you. Or is this the whole burying ones head in the sand thing?

You can't invent a technological jump when there isn't one. The reason the last gen was long was because the development costs rose so much. Everyone needed to recoup from it. This was because the technological leap was too high (cause of microsoft rushing the market to outplay sony). There were dire prices to pay for that.

This ISNT the technology industry. Its the gaming industry. We don't need the latest tech to make new games. In this industry tech is an auxiliar, not the centre piece. Technology has served this industry to make gaming visions a reality. Right now technology is beeing used as vanity. Tech is not the driving force behind this undustry. It's games. Sony is trying to flip it around and quite honestly i hope they go ahead with it, because it will be made quite clear. 

The only problem is we are all gonna get tossed right back MS's hands again unless Nintendo manages to get in with a good system. Sony doesn't like winning. They always get blind, greedy and abusive way too fast.

All this can do is destroy the games market. Customer confidence will drop like a rock and no one will risk buying a system that is outdated in 3 years. It maybe could work in a portable market where consoles cost 200. But a 400 console every 3 years? Nah... thats insanity

The Wii U became outdated in less than 3 years (pretty much in year one) but they are immune to the scenario you layed out against Sony?  Why should one bother with the NX?

1. Costs any more than it already does getting a game to work on tens of different specs on the PC? I dare say that even if the PS4 had four different specs optimizing for them is still far less of a headache than for a PC. But that aside, where are you getting this whole different hardware spec thing? Do you know what an API is? You really think that the work is going to be that much harder for devs such that it breaks the overall end user expericne cause they just won't be able to do it? It's sonys job to make sure that they tools available to the devs to work with are as similar as possible. the benefits of working withing a closed platform are still there. 
2. This is exactly what I'm saying you need to stop. You are fighting a battle that doesn't even exist. There are two SKUs, there aren't so machines. And sure as hell no profit is being split anywhere. Profits are still profits. And has it crossed your mind that selling at $399 Sony may be making more on the Neo than selling the base PS4 at $299? Ps4.... Neo... when you pay $60 for a game, it's the same thing to Sony. You need to stop making it sound like we are talking about two different platforms. 
3. Ok. let's pretend that this is the first time new more powerful hardware has been made while running on the same OS or its derivative from much older hardware. Oh wait.... that's been happening since Windows was invented. 
4. No. let's see..... For a 30fps game. Every frame needs to be spit out every 33ms. That means that the CPU and GPU must all do its thing in 33ms. If the CPU takes up 18ms of that time, then the GPU has only 15ms to do its thing for the same to be ready. With a much more powerful GPU, you can allow the CPU take up as much as 23ms knowing fully well that the GPU can do its required work in the 10ms thas left. 

You can call my idea nonsensical. Technically it's not even my idea. But the fact is this, it's already happenning. So we'll see. 

I'll say again. developers aren't supporting different skus. they are supporting One SKU that just happens to have settings for low, medium, high and ultra settings. Like you know, what's been done in the PC space for like.... forever.  

As I said, my theory is that it's simply not viable to shrink the current architecture, so they have to use one made for 14/16nm finfet to use this process.

But using a same-spec (18CU etc) chip as the old one opens a whole new can of worms, because code written "to the metal" for the old chip won't run as efficiently out of the box (and they certainly don't want every game to need a patch) on the new architecture, so to circumvent this problem they imo always had to throw in additional CUs to make sure the finfet chip can brute force PS4 parity in unpatched games. Doubling the CU count even makes it possible to sell the PS4 Neo at a higher price as long as both version coexist > higher margins.

Due to the enormous differences in structure size between chips made in 28nm and 14/16nm the PS4 Neo APU will certainly have a smaller die size than the current PS4 APU and in the end (when yields have caught up and process costs have sunken due to enough production capacities being available) that's the most important factor for chip price per unit (the more working chips you get from a silicon wafer, the cheaper they are per unit).

at the time they finalised the PS4 they might still have been hopeful to be able to use the 20nm process in the future and there were reports of AMD attempting to make use of that one up until dec 2014, yet it seems that never came to fruition and with that died that option for X1/PS4 APUs aswell

the newest processes even have a changed transistor layout (finfet) afaik effectively making "shrinks" complete redesigns, so that might have been out of the question from the get go

Nope. This isn't just the case. And I don't know how many times I could day it before it sinks in. Developers aren't supporting 2/3/4 different systems. They are supporting One system with 3-4 different settings. It's up to Sony to make that process smoother. Developers are working with ONE SDK. 

The reason the last generation lasted so long is exactly what makes this necessary. There is just too much time between technological jumps now. And there is no confusion here. You aren't walking into a store as a consumer and wondering which PS4 game to buy. You still just buy a game and toss it in. 

And this developers and publishers argument. That just tells me you didn't read my OP or he article I linked whch was in fact made by a developer. But I'll say this. APIs. 

Its pretty much now a fact that a more powerful PS4 is making its way to devs. and devs have spole about it. Devs kits are even with them. How is this still a sumor to you. Or is this the whole burying ones head in the sand thing?

It seems like you're not even trying to understand the differences between console optimization and PC development. Games aren't optimized on PC to the hardware, they're optimized to the API. On consoles you can profile the hardware and go further, fine tuning the behaviour of parallel processing to utilize most of the cpu/gpu cycles available. Next to optimizing the code by hardcoding resolution for example.

Sigh..... so you think console SDKs don't have APIs too? I don't even know where to start. Please try and understand. Optimization for a console, using the SDK provided by the platfomr holder and the APIs they make to allow developers take advantage of that hardware is infinitely easier than any kinda PC development. I don't know what about this we are arguing about. 

How can you not see why a single mass market slim is more profitable than carrying and supporting 2 sku.
Nor why selling a $60 game to the same user base generates less profit for a developer that has to make sure it works on 2 console hardware specs (and perhaps 3 with the next iteration)

Will there be a slight bump in the cost of QA and optimization? yes. But that bump is not our business. And is one affordeed by the size of the available insatll base. That's how publishers approach platforms. And by slight bump, we aren't even talking anywhere in the region of a 10% increas e in cost. Most likely around 5%. Unless Sony doesn't do their jobs well. And you keep saying this thing. Supporting two skus.... and I keep trying to tell you. That it will not seem that way at all. Think more of it as supporting two "presets". Cause that's what having APIs in a closed console dev environment allows. PRESETS. 

And do you really think the CPU sits idle waiting for the GPU??? Ever heard of parallel processing? The CPU is already working on the next frame, fetching data, processing sound, AI, controller input and what not. The cpu doesn't wait for the gpu, yet if the gpu needs more attention due to higher fps all those other tasks do get a smaller time slice.

What? Are you confusing pararell code with hyperthreading? There CPU exclusive tasks. Sound, AI...etc. Those for the most part work independently of the GPU. And the load those carry doesn't change regardless of how weak or powerful your system is. Unless your trying to add more (adding features). So unless enemies behave differently or there are more of them on the Neo than their are on the PS4. this wouldn't be a problem. And sonys dev documents clearly states that such differences aren't allowed. 

Then their are CPU tasks that are tied to the GPU. 

Simple math, if it takes a GPU 15ms to render a 1080p frame. It will take a GPU with exactly twice the power 7.5ms to render the exact same frame if memory bandwidth isn't a bottleneck. Whatever the case, habingbamuch more powerful GPU, and one designed to handle things that are not CPU based, will result in all round better performance. 

Ever consider this might be a one time thing instead of jumping to conclusions of an incremental console model?
To quote Lafiel again, his theory on why this is happening is much more plausible, actually a change in architecture making a traditional slim not profitable.