Well I'm thinking mindshare and advertising wise it's just better to evenly space things.  Plus Sony is great about stacking exclusives until a console is dead but they could honestly do that a little less and I'd still consider their support wonderful.  They had Sly 4, Puppeteer, GT6, TLoU, and Beyond 2 Souls in 2013 for PS3.  Now do I want them to abandon their previous gen console and have nothing for it in its last years like Xbox did last gen?  No.  But do I think stuff like Puppeteer and Sly 4 could have done better as the new gen titles and could GT6 have been their definitive next gen racing game in 2014 and therefore helped sales even more?  Yes.

The Last of Us 2 and Ghost of Tsushima will launch on the PS4, that's a certainty. There's no way they'll miss out on a 95+ million user base that the PS4 has.

Death Stranding is the only one I'm not certain about, and Final Fantasy VII Remake will certainly come out on PS5 around 2021/2022.

If they can release base consoles with double the GPU power of the X1X, along with 16GB of RAM and significantly better CPU at $399, I'd argue premium consoles at launch are not that crucial. But the likelihood of that seems really low to me, I'd like to be wrong though.

You just made a straw man. I said "SOME GAMES" and a resolution boost is huge when its games in the ball park of 720p. You already know some of the games I'm referring to so I won't drag this discussion further.

People said the same about the pro yet it was a decent upgrade and sold very well. 

If they do a premium at launch do you think they'll do a mid gen upgrade as well? 

Not very much, hence why  I think people will be very underwhelmed by the next gen at launch and thus selling pretty slowly after the first rush.

I'm sure the Pro sold fine given PS4 is a top selling console already. But I don't see much hype or fanfare over it, I genuinely feel Sony was too concerned about sticking to $399 that they made an underwhelming premium console and its an edge they didn't need to give MS.

If Sony makes a base for $399 and a premium for $599, I don't think the mid gen upgrade would be as necessary. The 8th gen upgrades are primarily GPU upgrades, they can have double or triple the GPU power at launch as well. After a few years people could upgrade to the premium for about $399.

Significant CPU and RAM upgrades should be equal on the base and premium in my opinion. I mean a CPU capable of 60 fps gaming isn't expensive and 16GB of RAM dedicated to games should be more than enough. The X1X is already giving 9GB of RAM for games so its not a big upgrade per se.

If the visuals aren't a significant upgrade from what we're seeing on the X1X, I think people are going to be genuinely underwhelmed. I mean people aren't necessarily blown away by what the X1X is doing either even though its a nice improvement.

Either way, base 8th gen consoles are still the lead platforms at the moment and at the very least 9th gen specs (even if underwhelming) will move lead hardware development forward.

I think people are making a mistake using X1X as a point reference. Firstly it assumes that it's hardware is fully  being utilised in most games (it's not) & it assumes that native 4k will be the target for most AAA PS5  games (I don't think it will).

With all its beefed up specs the X1X still does not have a game which looks as good of God of War, Uncharted 4 or The Last of Us II.... fundementally its playing Xbox One S games with resolution cranked up & some minor texture/stability improvements. Resolution is nice but it's really not responsible for the wow factor when a new shiny game is shown off.. There are still people on this forum who think that TLOU2 demo is secretly running on the PS5 ( ND have confirmed its running on PS4Pro) and Sony didn't need 4k to achieve the illusion of next gen.

So really our question should be looking at the base PS4 which doesn't have a significantly lower spec system holding back (unlike Xbox One X being held back by base systems), and manages to achieve stellar results, normally at 1080p 30fps. With PS5 developers will be working with a new base system 6-8x the flops, 6-8x the memory bandwith, 2-3x the overall RAM, a CPU which will run circles around  Pro or X1X's jaguar cores and Navi architecture which will bring efficiencies everywhere. The only thing 1X games show us, is that cross gen PS5 titles will comfortable output 4k, 60fps with all the bells and whistles.

Where games built for the next gen are concerned, I think many AAA developers will go for upscalling solutions and push CGI quality visuals before pushing native 4k. The audience (and TV's) just isn't there to make 4k the target, not when there'll be new up-scaling solutions which offer something comparable to 4k at half the performance cost. Pro and 1X solely exist to offer resolution jumps (and aren't exactly selling like hotcakes) but when the new wave of systems are the baseline I'm sure we'll see targets (and gfx settings) all over the place including unapologetic 1080p. And on that note I do not think sony will offer 2 SKU's at launch. For Microsoft it's important because they need to find a way to undercut Sony and rejoin the race, but offering separate 1080p and 4k systems out the gate doesn't sound like it's ideal from a development standpoint and I think Sony will just release one SKU. Supersampling will still benefit 1080p users, users won't have to purchase a new system when they decide to update their TV sets and developers will feel more free to create games in their own vision, their own targets and have a more powerful baseline to work with as opposed to a gimped 1080p box (Lockhart/re-purposed X1X with a new CPU).

If PS5 and "Xbox Two" get full BC, of course many of them will do that.

And that is a good thing for several parties:

• enthusiasts can upgrade to a new $499 PS5/Xbox Two for about $200 - $300 without losing access to their old games (that can increase the demand for the new consoles)
• late adopters can get some sweet deals for a used PS4 Pro / Xbox One X ($200 - $300 depending on the model and condition)
• less new PS4 and Xbox One X consoles have to be produced after their successors' launch -> good for the environment

Do you really expect them to get back 300$ for an used console? 100-200$ seem more likely to me.

And that all implies BC. While it's probable to come, there's no guarantee yet.

But somehow, you all seem not to get the point I'm trying to make: That the PS5/Xbox Next really need some exclusive killer apps to make people move over to the new system if the visuals are so similar. Especially those who play mostly just annualized titles like CoD or Fifa probably won't see much of a need to upgrade anytime soon if they have a Pro or X already.