http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2016-07-07-epic-boss-is-thrilled-at-the-prospect-of-playstation-neo-and-xbox-scorpio

"I'm absolutely thrilled with this," Sweeney said of the mid-gen refresh in a recent interview with Eurogamer. "It gives you the best of both worlds, the upgrade cycle of the PC which ensures that people always have access to the latest and greatest hardware and games don't go out of date over a seven year cycle, together with the fact there's a box you can go and buy - or two boxes - and you're guaranteed that everything can work. And I think the configurations for developers are very reasonable.

"From an industry insider perspective, the console industry will grow and sustain its user base much better if it doesn't have to reset its user base to zero every seven years. The idea of throwing everything out and doing everything from scratch every seven years is completely crazy. And everything Epic's done with our new game development approach, involving these online games we're going to maintain over time, it's about building games where we don't have to reset our user base to zero when we want to add new features."

I don't buy his argument. I think the idea of upgrading consoles every year or so like if they were mobile devices is absurd and not consumer friendly . The biggest over reaction is to say that the idea of releasing a new console every 7 years is completly crazy. With this kind of life cycle i just think that Sony and MS would be better off just making games for PC.

No one said it'd be every year. It seems as if it'll be PS4, 3 years, PS4 Neo, 3 years PS5, 3 years PS5 Neo etc etc.

i think this is the most consumer friendly thing the industry has ever done.

What is he so thrilled at? As far as we know MS and Sony won't let devs do anything new with Scorpio and Neo, just res and graphics settings upgrade.

Lets not do that. When PS5 comes out have a High end/Mid version release at the same time. PS5/NEO release  - 4 years - Slim NEO - 3 years- New cycle 

Because the upgraded version of a console won't have the exact same kind of components, like different family of CPUs (Jaguar => Zen) and/or GPUs. That means that, because they'll have to work with 2 or even more console hardwares, game engines won't be as optimized as they are now.

And because of that, Epic sees an oportunity to get more Unreal Engine licenses as there will be less reasons to develop in-house game engines.

I like this new model also. 3-4 years per upgrade and your games remain playable on future platforms.

And people still think that this is a good idea... 

You guys are worrying about issues that don't exist. And hypothetical situations based on nothing at all, all the evidence actually points to the contrary. 

Devs or publishers will always build their games first for the largest market out there. By the time the Neo is at 10M, the core PS4 could very well be at 70M. Its ridiculous to think that devs will build for 10M first and ignore the 70M. That just makes zero sense. Devs will jist optimize their games for the core PS4 and then add in whatever extra the neo mode permits.

By thr time we have hardware in a PS console (probably like PS6) that will be able to run games that just can't run on the base PS4 (even in 720p@30fps) Everyome would have at the time updated their console to either a Neo/PS5/PS5neo. Unless that person plans on using the PS4 for 9-12yrs. And the neo/PS5 iterations will probably be able to run the PS6 games on some sort of level (even at 720p).

And all this talk about 1yr smartphone cycles is just sensationalist chatter. No one has said that consoles will come out every 1yr, if anything its more like every 3-4yrs. And as lomg as games remain forward and backward compatible I don't see the issue. 

Cause he can keep selling the same engine without spending much effort at making better or new things. Just shinier pixels.