WTF?

I'll try and be concise....

1. next gen tech as applies to this thread is anything that goes into the next generation of consoles. Doesn't matter if its been around for the last 20yrs, what matters is if its going to be used in the next generation of consoles and what benefits it may bring.
   
   
2. Talking about the interface is actually more important than talking about the type of drive used in them for obvious reasons. One dictates the other.
   
   When talking about the SATA interface, you basically have mechanical drives or SSDs or hybrids (SSHD), but whats important there is the interface which peaks at a theoretical 600MB/s.
   
   When talking about M.2 interface you can only hav SSDs. But in this case the heoretical peak is at least 600MB/s all the way up to 3GB/s+. Its easier to have a more "comprehensive" discussion on what kinda tech will be used for the next gen consoles if you are looking at the interface cause that will dictate all that is possible and to be expected.

You outline three options; two of which are already used in the current gen consoles (Switch and PS4 Pro).
You give us an infant level explanation of the connector.
You don't even present tech that would realistically be used in a next gen console.

Why would I be satisfied with that?
Go look at Permalite's posts, there is more reason to read any one of them, than the thread itself.

If you are going to talk about connectors, at least do Some research, and present that to the reader.
Try to create some value for the people who will read your thread.

Also look up SAS or U.2.

Sadly, though the PS4 Pro has a SATA 3 port, it still has the slow bus on the mobo, so there is very little difference.

Not 100% sure about XB1 X, but I seem to recall hearing that it was designed with a faster bus on the mobo than the standard XB1, so you should be able to get load times that are a good bit faster by replacing the standard hard drive with an SSD. 

Yes thats because on the PS4 the I/O bus is basically a SATA 2 lane. That means that anything you conect to that bus will be sharing that 600MB/s max limit. 

Ideally, that bus should have been a PCIE bus which would have meant that all connected devices have a pool of 4GB/s (depending on what kinda PCIE lane is used) to share from. But those PCIE lanes makes the MB cost more to make.

Nope, AMD specifically stated that Pinnacle Ridge is NOT Ryzen 2. It will probably have a respin and "12nm process" (which is just an improved 14nm process, really) and certainly have errata fixes and a clock rate increase.

However, I doubt there will be much, if any, change in the power consumption (might be a bit due to the bugfixing and metal spin and the improved process, but don't expect anything more than a couple % out of that) and apart from bugfixing it's still fundamentally a first gen Ryzen, hence why AMD doesn't call it Ryzen 2. At best, it's a minimal shrink from the original Ryzen without any other real improvements. It's a Zen Refresh, but no Zen+ or Zen 2

I agree. I simply can't see Sony waiting later than 2020 to release PS5 personally. We are already starting to reach that same point last gen where 360/PS3 started to feel like they were really holding gaming back. The sign that that point has been reached is that framerate issues start to become commonplace on consoles. By 2010 framerates issues were becoming increasingly common on 360/PS3, and by 2012 we had games like Far Cry 3 with frame drops into the teens during some scenes. Meanwhile this gen we have been struggling with framerate issues from the start of the gen thanks to the weak Jaguar CPU's, but now we're even starting to see some GPU related framerate issues, and it's only going to get worse as PC continues to pull further ahead. I think 2021 is the absolute limit that this gen can reach, and more than likely it will be 2020 for Sony. MS may be able to hold off until 2021 by remarketing the XB1 X as an entry level gen 9 console, able to play the same multiplats as PS5 at a lower 1080p resolution, but the Jaguar CPU in X, even though it is heavily overclocked, may prove too weak to even play gen 9 games at 1080p 30 fps. 

SSHD's f*cking suck though.. but i guess if you can code it to work with the game you are playing and streaming all files into the SSD part of it.. but.. then you could just have an SSD straight up..

But, drives will also need to be faster than they were this gen, loading the 4K textures and higher polygon character models we'll see next gen will make load times even longer than they are this gen, so a standard hard drive, even if it's 7200 RPM as opposed to the 5400 RPM drives we have this gen, simply won't cut the mustard.

Yeah, PS4 and XB1 only have a SATA 2 bus on their mobo's so even if you do put an SSD in them the SSD will be severely gimped. Plus like you said, the games on consoles just aren't coded to work with faster hard drives like SSD's. 

Sadly, though the PS4 Pro has a SATA 3 port, it still has the slow bus on the mobo, so there is very little difference.

1. 
   When talking about the SATA interface, you basically have mechanical drives or SSDs or hybrids (SSHD), but whats important there is the interface which peaks at a theoretical 600MB/s.

You outline three options; two of which are already used in the current gen consoles (Switch and PS4 Pro).
You give us an infant level explanation of the connector.
You don't even present tech that would realistically be used in a next gen console.
Lol, so what is your idea of what would be realistically used in the next gen consoles?
Why would I be satisfied with that?
Go look at Permalite's posts, there is more reason to read any one of them, than the thread itself.
As i said in the OP, this thredad is to share and expand knowledge on the issue. Its not for me to give an in depth analysis of everything thats out there. So Permalites contributions aren't only welcome but are exactly what I am hoping users do here. So what is your contribution?
If you are going to talk about connectors, at least do Some research, and present that to the reader.
Try to create some value for the people who will read your thread.
Read above again pls....
Also look up SAS or U.2.
lol... both of which aren't mainstream and definitely won't make it into next gen hardware. What you find in console hardware are usually the most common and massly adopted tech, primarily for the price.

Sata 2 is limited to 300MB/s. Not 600MB/s.

The Playstation 4 Pro is using Sata 3.
My bad... mixing up my sata bandwiths.....

Not a real limitation as the majority of Mechanical Disks, heck even probabably SSHD's are not going to be pushing past that 600MB/s barrier.

Heck there are even a heap of budget SSD's (That a console is more likely to use) that wouldn't either.

The other issue is of course... External Hard Drives. This generation has almost necessitated their use (I have two 4 Terabyte drives dangling off the Xbox), next gen will only exacerbate the problem.
An Internal SSD is NOT going to assist in that regard.

But... If Microsoft/Sony were to include some NAND on the motherboard to cache *all* drives (Optical, Internal and External) then that is a better approach overall, don't you think?

But thats exactly my point though... and why I even listed the bandwith as 500MB/s.... in hindsight I should have put ~500MB/s. Thats because its really hard to find anything that averages that theoretical bandwith. Not just with SATA but anything for that matter. Hence why its called a theoretical limit.

The cache thing seems like a great idea.... but wouldn't that just make the console more expensive to make. Or does that allow them cheap out on what kinda internal drive they would use? So maybe have something like 128GB/256GB internal cache over a PCIex4 lane?

Wouldn't it be just better to stick in an M.2 drive at the end of that instead?

There are ways around that though. Every console could ship with a M.2 Nvme 480GB drive. And then have support for external HDDs on day one. Hell those launch consoles could even have an empty drive bay to slot in an "expansion drive" of the sata variant. But from day one the option will be there to just swapout your M.2 drive for a bigger one if you want. But if you don't but need more space you could always throw in a 2TB sata drive in your console or just connect one externally.

But thats exactly my point though... and why I even listed the bandwith as 500MB/s.... in hindsight I should have put ~500MB/s. Thats because its really hard to find anything that averages that theoretical bandwith. Not just with SATA but anything for that matter. Hence why its called a theoretical limit.

The cache thing seems like a great idea.... but wouldn't that just make the console more expensive to make. Or does that allow them cheap out on what kinda internal drive they would use? So maybe have something like 128GB/256GB internal cache over a PCIex4 lane?

Oh, and that last point, wouldn't taht be kinda like the NS setup (or the embedded option in the OP)? Have some sort of embedded cache but all users connect a standard SATA drive to the console. The console will probably come with one anyways.

 And considering it would take about 7-8 tflops just to pull off native 4K on PS4 quality graphics, that only leaves a spare 4-7 tflops to put toward graphical improvements, not exactly a huge improvement. Basically what I'm expecting for next-gen is Witcher 3 pre-downgrade graphics running at native 4K, maybe a bit better. Personally I'll be happy with that, though I'm sure some people won't. But it's better than letting PS4 and XB1 act like anchors on game development until 2022-23 imo. 

Currently, the fastes consumer bluray drive is a 16x drive.... thats a theoretical peak of 72MB/s.

Even if by next gen that number doubles and they can afford to put that kinda drive in a console, it still won't be as good as what we can potentially get with even a sata 3 based drive solution.