It's strange that you ignore the ~25 years of history where Playstation comes out on top. The only time it didn't happen was when Sony royally screwed up and had a console that was not only $200 more expensive, but also was complicated to develop for, so multiplats were inferior for 1-2 years. Even then, they came in at a close 2nd. No other brand has or would survive that. But, here we are, with Playstation, yet again, dominating.

Sony is not going to repeat the mistakes of the PS3 ever again. PS5 will be $399-$449, with as much power as they can pump into the box at that price, and more than likely be B/C with the highly successful PS4. They also have a much stronger 1st party output than MS, and maybe even Nintendo. Next gen, is going to play out just like this one. Only it may be even worse for MS, with them pulling off XB1 numbers, instead of XBO numbers. 

Some of your arguments were predictions.
Either way. Arguments are also not evidence.

Except the evidence we have currently says that the rate of tech improvement is slowing, which is why Intel elongated it's last few nodes, AMD has essentially been rebadging it's GPU's for years, Intel's CPU improvements have been extremely minor.... Have you not been keeping up with the happenings in the semiconductor world?

False.
 

Please do.

Evidence is that which justifies belief. Either take my arguments as evidence, or take the premises of my arguments as evidence. Either way evidence was given.

The rate of tech improvement slowing, only helps my argument. Whether it stays the same (as I originally assumed) or slows down, the outcome is the same. The goal, of next gen graphics, will not be reached in time, for it to affect next gen consoles. 

I looked into Ray Tracing, but I'm confused. The whole thing looks like it takes a crapton of processing power. It also looks like it only really makes highly reflective things like glass, marble, chrome, look realistic. I seriously doubt the PS5 will be able to run current gen games at 4K 60 FPS, and Ray Tracing looks like it takes even more horsepower than that. Am I wrong? Is Ray Tracing easier to do than 4K with 60 FPS? I'll try to find a demo of a modern PC running a scene with Ray Tracing in the next few days. IMO if a $2,500 PC can't do it, at a framerate of 30 FPS, then PS5 definitely won't be able to do it either. 

Wow some people on here are totally clueless about finance and business. News flash Microsoft Xbox division is profitable and making money. This thread is claiming Microsoft can't afford to release after Sony? IF Microsoft wanted they could release a next gen console for free, they can afford to do anything. Does it make business sense, that's the real question!

The OP is forgetting that Microsoft have a 4k ready consoles already with the Xbox one X, that means Microsoft can wait it out and let Sony release the PS5. Xbox one X can compete directly with the PS5 on price point alone and by that time Microsoft will already have release their plan for the next consoles that should trump of all of PS5 hardware. Microsoft has already shown that they want to be the leader in power and that their entire focus is switching to software in order to really compete with Sony. Beating Sony would be nice but that is not Microsoft motivation, they are first and foremost a business interested in generation profits. That's what really drive the company. Being the market leader would mean much high revenues and profits therefore that is one of their indirect goal.

If Phil is still head of Xbox, Microsoft for the Xbox Two will build a consoles that will continue the tag line "The world most powerful consoles". I hope they wait for Sony to reveal all their card and have price parity with the PS5 when they release their next console. The entire focus for Xbox Two will be on it's consoles exclusives launch lineup on the "The world most powerful consoles".

The XB1X will be vastly inferior to the PS5 in tech, especially when we talk about the CPU. Not to mention, there are no developers who develop games with the XB1X in mind. They develop with the XB1S/PS4 in mind since they have larger userbases.

Giving the PS5 a year head start isn't a great idea and can actually hurt Microsoft's gaming revenue. See the 360 and PS3 as an example. It allowed Microsoft to eat away a significant chunk of the Playstation userbase and exhibit substantial growth from the OG Xbox to the 360. Similar thing will happen in this hypothetical scenario, but it won't just be a matter of the PS5 taking away a chunk of the Xbox userbase. It will also cause a ripple effect into services and MAU.

Ecosystems have become important to gaming businesses. The goal of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo is to make it tough for consumers to leave their ecosystems. They achieve this goal through providing good software (e.g. Sony and Nintendo's 1st party) and services (e.g. OG Xbox and 360 BC). If Sony manages to lock a good chunk of the Xbox userbase into their ecosystem, then it may lead to a potential loss of customers for Microsoft. This is not to say consumers cannot play on both Playstation and Xbox, but not all consumers shit out money and have all the time in the world. If they have to choose only one, then they will go with the ecosystem that provides better value. However, there won't be much of a choice for next gen if the PS5 does get a year head start, especially if it provides PS4 BC.

In order for MS to be able to accomplish this goal without doubt, they not only require multiple console hardware performance levels designed, but need to hope that PS announces PS5 as early as they did with PS4. If PS has any strategy, they will allow PS4 to keep chugging, and will announce PS5 around E3, and launch that same holiday, so that the next XB would have to wait for an entire year to launch the next holiday season. Waiting an extra year is only truly worth it for MS if they can use a brand new state of the art technology for significantly higher performance, as well as take a massive loss subsidizing it, to sell it for a similar price as the PS5.

PS seems to be playing it more safe with PS4 and Pro, but there is nothing stopping them from surprising everyone and pulling a PS3 again, just with a lower manufacturing cost and reasonable retail pricing. If XB tries to launch alongside PS5, but PS5 costs $600 to make and is sold for $399, then MS has to either go out of their way to make the 'XB2' for $700 or $800 to make sure they win the narrative, and also take a massive loss at $399. Even if they sold it for $499, while it would probably sell better than XB1X did due to it's value, the PS5 will still sell best due to enough value at a widely attainable price. Considering the XB1 situation as a whole, and that XB1X probably cost around $600 to make and was sold for $499 at launch, the odds of 'XB2' being subsidized by hundreds or sold for half price seems pretty unrealistic. If PS goes for a larger subsidy though, then there is no reason MS couldn't either.

If MS assumes that PS will at best, build a $500 console and sell it for $399, then even if 'XB2' costs $600 and is planned to sell at $399, if when announced, the PS5 hardware is worth around $600 as well, then even if 'XB2' ended up with like 1TF more performance, marketing it as "the more powerful console ever" won't mean jack. It'll be memed to death much like XB1 was. They could be more realistic and change it to "the most powerful console available", but it still won't matter much unless it has the software to back it up.

The later they wait after the PS5 is launched, the better their chances of being able to have the hardware power narrative as well as strong software to go along with it. If PS5 launches 2020, and MS waits to launch 'XB2' in 2021, then it better also have either plenty of vast quality first party titles, or 2022 level performance at a similar price to PS5 to make it truly competitive.

You accuse people of not knowing about finance and business, and then go on talking about Xbox being able to give away consoles if they wish?  You may want to check out a mirror to see the person who is not in the know.  There's a reason the X is so expensive.

Xbox ≠ MS.  MS has its own priorities.  And it is obvious by the lack 1st party SW and 3rd party exclusives, as well as a decline in marketing deals, that Xbox is not as big of a priority for them.  They also have investors that they need to answer to.  If next gen they decide to give away consoles for free, or even a large discount, investors are not going to be happy.  There were quite a few of them who wanted them to pull out of the console biz at the beginning of this gen.  I imagine its going to be even more next gen if the PS5 gets a whole year on the market by itself.  I mean they are going to be launching against a console that at that point would probably have sold ~14M already, with no signs of stopping.

Also, it would be pathetic for MS to even attempt to use the X as competition against the PS5.  It can't even compete against the weaker Pro.  How is it going to compete against a PS5 that blows it out of the water, power-wise?  As for the XB2, it's going to have a problem with competing against the PS5.  Not only is PS a much larger brand WW, but there is really no chance of it being incredibly more powerful than the PS5 without also being more expensive.  The reason being, there is no way MS is going to let Sony release an entire year before them.  They will try to keep it to 6 months later, but most likely will try to launch at the exact same time.  Anything more would be suicide.  They also do not have a good structure built up to push out high quality exclusives like Sony does.  They are going to give it a decent push next gen, most likely using 3rd party exclusives, even it just timed, but Sony is going to be ready with true, high quality exclusives.

@ bold

It's important to note that Sony is going to be able to get more out of $600 than MS will.  Sony is going to have a 100M+ selling console that they can point to to better negotiate prices for parts.  MS does not have that advantage. Given the drop from last gen, I'd say its going to be pretty hard for MS to negotiate really cheap parts for the XB2.

Correct, there is no doubt truth to that, but I'm sure it also depends to some degree on what products in total are being purchased by each company. While I'm not aware of all the hardware SNY and MS sell, what parts are in them and where they source them exactly, I would think that it doesn't come down to each specific console product itself. How much of an extra deal that allows for the consoles themselves I don't know, but PS still should have a larger advantage in this case with SNY being much more of a hardware company than MS is.

Evidence was not given.

Next Gen hardware is already here. It's expensive. But it's here.
The Xbox One and Playstation 4 released with only mid-range hardware, time hasn't been kind to them on that front.
The Xbox One X and Playstation 4 Pro does bridge the gap somewhat, but again, they are only mid-range hardware.

The bulk of the Xbox One X and Playstation 4's power is mostly spent on driving up framerates and resolution, rather than actually making giant strides in rendering quality as Developers need to keep the base machines in mind during development.

The other issue is AMD. Rebadging, Re-releasing and small iterative releases for the last 6+ years with Graphics Core Next hasn't done them any favors, they are lagging behind nVidia, their designs are hot, slow and all-round inefficient.

Of course it uses a crap-ton of processing power, it's why it's "next gen".

Nope!

You aren't wrong.

No it isn't.
With that in mind, we aren't just jumping straight from Rasterization to Ray Tracing, it's going to be a gradual transition... The Transition to Ray Tracing has actually been happening since the 7th gen consoles, when the Frostbite engine started to leverage it, there is a reason why Battlefield 3's visuals were highly praised at the time.
This generation has saw a continued refinement on that front... And next gen we should see a few large leaps towards that end as the FP rate should be a multiples increase over the Xbox One/Playstation 4.

Besides the above, that is actually a good approach. If a PC isn't going to do it, then consoles certainly will not, but games do need to catch up with PC hardware though.