Consoles are about being cheap, not max power-savings. There is no reason to go to 7mm unless it becomes as cheap as 14nm.

PS4 will never use 7nm. By that time, ps5 will be here, and factory alocation will be prioritying ps5 and pc market.

7nm this year for high margin devices. Basically devices that can or already sell at some sort of ridiculous premium.

7nm next year will become available for nearly everything else. Except consoles as yeilds would still be too pricey, unless of course either sony or MS intends to rush to market and bite the bullet on higher than could be chip costs. Though that would be silly cause that would mean they sacrifice on other things like say Ram....

2020 will see 7nm become mature enough (aka 7nm+) to meet the kinda volume production sony/ms will need for their consoles.

And the thing about the pro/slim using 7nm, well the thing is that a new fab node doesn't just automagically mean you can shrink everything. Millions still have to be spent on R&D and redesigning every single component in the PS4/PS4pro to make th emost from a 7nm APU process. Question is is that money better spent on a smaller PS4/PS4pro or on the PS5?

The PS4 doesn't die at the arrival of the PS5. There is still lots of money on the table if Sony manages to manufacture and push consoles into the market at let's say ~$100 per unit and sell them at $130 ($149 in stores/with retailer cut).

Obviously TSMC needs to have enough production capabilities (>reasonable prices per wafer), but I doubt that will be a problem come early 2020.

Sorry I meant to say ps5 Pro for 5nm

https://wccftech.com/amd-sampling-7nm-zen-2-cpus-later-this-year-launching-in-2019/

https://overclock3d.net/news/gpu_displays/7nm_vega_silicon_is_running_in_amd_s_hardware_labs/1

I would expect such a console next year if it were to happen.

It's worth mentioning that these are often hybrid geometries that have been embellished for marketing purposes.

Intels 10nm is going to be superior to TSMC's 7nm.
https://www.semiwiki.com/forum/content/7191-iedm-2017-intel-versus-globalfoundries-leading-edge.html

https://www.extremetech.com/computing/246902-intel-claims-three-year-advantage-10nm-process-wants-change-define-process-nodes

Won't be an issue, because the 3nm chips won't actually be 3nm.
I mean, what you describe is a very real problem, but we are years away from being near that wall.

When you say they won't actually be 3nm is this like checkerboarding and the faux 4k?

I think Sony could be doing another shrink again and that could be PS4 super slim for $199 by the end of this year depending on TSMC's 7nm production capacity ...

well, the process node "names" aren't descriptive of the actual structure sizes it produces

it's a bit like "naming" a resolution "8k by 4k" and it being 3600 x 1800 pixels