Ideally Microsoft should be releasing their console early or at the worst along with PS5 and hopefully undercut them in price. Otherwise I can't see Microsoft competing with Sony TBH.

And going by this gen, I'd say that's going to be the PS5.  PS4 and PS4 Pro both launched at $400.  XBO and XBO X both launched at $500.  I could see XB2 launching at $500, as well, while still not being any more powerful than the PS5.  Reason being that Sony will be able to negotiate better prices when they have a history of selling 100M+ consoles per gen.  Only exception being the PS3, which still sold 85M+.  And if they are also using a 7nm Navi GPU, while MS is stuck using the 14nm Vega, they are going to be getting more chips per wafer.

Not surprised at all

I know they are going to reveal PS5 next year. I still expect them to launch late 2019, mostly because that is the smart move. Of course they could do the dumb thing and release in 2020.

Not if it's true that PS4 was $400-$500 to manufacture initially and was planned to sell for $500 but was subsidized to an extent after seeing the XB1 price. By this I mean if PS goes all in this time on a $500 PS5 since they are now confident, they could very well spec it so the manufacturing cost is $500-$600, and eat $50 to $100 per unit early on. If Scarlet is priced at $500 yet costs close to $500 to manufacture, PS still has an advantage, as long as MS doesn't subsidize theirs to make up for the weaker specs. Whether they would or not is a toss up, but the XB1S price stays up and just gets bundled so.

XB1 had major issues, besides the fact it was weaker and more expensive. PS4 was a no brainer for many, especially the casuals. If both brands price at $500, then it's down to the specs and software. If most PS early adopters can't afford a $500 PS5, then it shouldn't be much different for MS early adopters, so PS has nothing to worry about with a widely affordable PS4 on the shelf. If there's a bunch of cross gen games like people are guessing there might be, then even less reason for PS to worry about you buying a PS5 within the first year.

Scarlet at $400 probably wont be enough of a jump from Scorpio, unless MS subsidizes it a lot or offers insanely good subscription packages from the start. PS5 is more likely to be $400 out of the two, but if the odds are good that Scarlet will be $500 again like the other XB1's, then PS might as well shoot for at least $500 as well. MS could wait a year and launch at $400, but then the specs should be pretty close to a $500 PS5 that launched a year earlier.

I'd guess if MS is stuck, and can't get a good enough price from Nvidia for a GPU, that they will just wait for AMD's next gen GPU Kuma, which is supposed to be ready sometime in 2020 I believe. MS may have to subsidize some to get the price to $500, but since it looks like they did something similar with Scorpio, I don't think it's out of the question by any means. If PS thinks this may be the case with MS, then PS could launch at $500 as well, with or without worthier specs due to negotiations, and then after a year, always drop the price by $50 more than MS does since your tech is a little older and cheaper and your getting a better deal on it.

Nope.

6 months gap can't make any meaningful difference in possible specs.

Another way to look at it, whatever sony anounces whenever they announce it has been in the oven for years before that point. And we know they are both going with AMD. The only way one comes out being as much as 25% or more powerful than the other is if they wait for aother 2 or 3 years, or mke a console that cost significantly more. 

So sny going from a mtch to november lunch in the same year cant possibly mean that we get a more feature packed console. It wll be the same thing.

With next gen coming with 4k being more prominent, I can't see either of them being lower than $500

What I meant by features was a decent UI, all apps ready to go, working game dvr... Think about how any console was when it launched. Almost different systems by the end of the generation. A bare bones ui won't be as easy to tolerate at launch next generation imo. From either manufacturer. Should have been more specific.

I could be wrong..... but I believe the PS5 UI is going to be very similar to what we have now on the PS4. It will run even faster, probably have a few new features that makes it generally better but it would mostly be the exact same.

Absolutely no need to reinvent the wheel whe it comes to that.

Navi is Graphics Core Next. The same technology that powers the Xbox One and Playstation 4.
I wouldn't place expectations to high.

AMD hasn't been driving up efficiency as much as they should, their chips are large and power hungry, every time AMD is about to release an iterative update to Graphics Core Next, everyone hypes it up... But the reality is... Whilst AMD clings to GCN, they aren't going to be making giant leaps and bounds... And everyone walks away let down.

Microsoft should be able to leverage Navi or AMD's next gen uArch, Navi isn't Sony technology or Sony exclusive, it's Graphics Core Next which is AMD technology.