Sure the hardware launching this year could have been as up to date as possible, but how expensive do you think that would be for MS and how much would they be willing to subsidize it? Would MS have paid to put Ryzen on 7nm, because if they didn't it would consume considerably more power at 14nm. Would they pay to have Navi put on 14nm? If the console performance was considered high at 14nm, that means a bigger PSU, bigger or more expensive cooling, larger console shell, etc. It wouldn't have been all that much different than the PS3 engineering and manufacturing cost as well as subsidy to try and get it to $500 by now. If they charged anymore than that, or lost the performance crown by a significant amount again due to lower input costs and lack of subsidy, it would have been Dreamcast for them.

Well, now in June, things seems to be clearer to know what the consoles are going to do this year, so...

Switch keeps doing very well, with a huge growth from last year despite no heavy hitters until now, although last year performance of Switch was kinda disappointing too and is still behind what PS4 did last year in the same period, so let's say Switch is doing that, "very well" and is surprising me with its performance. This is not the strongest period of the year for Nintendo consoles anyway. Super Mario Maker 2 in a few days is going to help Switch sales a lot. MM2 seems to be the next great franchise for Nintendo in terms of sales. It's going to do gangbusters. If i have to guess right now, Switch seems to be on pace to end the year with 19-19'5M sold to consumers (and around 18-18'5M shipments, so doing better than what they said last FY), more than i expected at the begining of the year, way more...so i admit being wrong on that. But I also don't expect this kind of growth (+25-30% YOY) for the last 3-4 months of the year, there can be a growth of course, but not by that much. because i don't expect Pokemon S&S doing what SSBU did last year, so yeah, very good year for Switch, maybe they can even reach 20M sold. 2019 should be peak year for the console.

For PS4 and Sony's prediction of 16M shipped by this FY, it's time to say the same thing i said about 20M Nintendo forecast last year. NO WAY IT'S HAPPENING. PS4 is on pace to fight to reach 14M sales to consumers. If there is not a huge official and permanent price cut for PS4 base model for $200 or something like that during the second half of the year i see it impossible PS4 can reach that goal of 16M shipped. Although, if we take some perspective of the situation, selling 13-14M units to consumers in 2019 so far in the gen and after so many units already sold is still impressive, and what i expect is Sony admiting in the future they were too optimistic like Nintendo was last year.

As for XBOX..., i said months ago that XBO won't reach 50M before next gen console arrives, and after knowing now when exactly Scarlett is going to launch, Holiday 2020, i'm pretty sure now. XBO needs to sell around 7'5M units from June 2019 to Nov 2020. They won't....100% sure about it.

7nm would be very much set this year. Last year would have been 14nm, and that's why I crossed that one out. I agree that doing it in 14nm would not be feasible.

I made a test built on Alternate with similar powerful hardware as is expected for Scarlett and got to a price of around 800€ - and that's consumer price. Microsoft could certainly shave off at least 100€ off of that, if not 200€. At 600€, they could sell it at $499 for the first year(s) until the prices drop for them. That was the modus operandi for gen 5-7, and the losses ain't too big to not recover them with the software sales.

Dreamcast needed about twice what it was selling for, and we're far away from that. Plus, Dreamcast got plugged because Sega was bleeding money everywhere, not just on the console. There's no chance that could happen with Microsoft anytime soon.

Xbox1 reads like a dying console now the moment Spencer took over its gone downhill. Under Matrick the xbox one console would have been better off even with its rocky start

That's a great point actually, I mean... Microsoft drew it out longer themselves with promises from the very start, when the X1 arrived it arrived pretty much DOA but instantly got promises that the power of the cloud will fix it, wait up for that, then a few years later it was the power of the X1X will fix it wait for that while the main issue was the tainted name from the get go because it was linked with TV, Sports, Kinect, Ryse, Mattick, No used games, TV, Sports, always online, no free online play for Fortnite, TV, Sports, Etc. the whole X1 name was linked with anti gamer things, more power just meant the same anti gamer ideas but stronger.

Imagine if they had released the Xbox 1 X... but not as an Xbox 1, If they had released that system as the successor in name but the exact same hardware which launched in it, increasing from DDR3 > 5, 8GB > 12GB, 1.79TF > 6TF, Massive VHS > Slick Vapor Chamber, but instead of Xbox 1 label and OS give it a different operating system externally to the user but with a lineup of new games in 2019 like Crackdown 3 and possible push Halo Infinite more and announce the Nintendo rivaling fact that the system can play 100% of Xbox 1 games, near 100% backwards compatibility, with the exception of Kinect titles as that is being moved away from (heck even allow them work with the adapter which was being sold down the line but make it so that out of the box it was moving away from Kinect but sticking with gaming), It would have given the system the ability to have its own line of games which didn't have to run on the base model of X1 which would clearly hold back any titles designed from the ground up with 6TF of power were going to suffer horribly having the 1.79 noose around the neck holding them back.

Microsoft have even done this move twice in the past with their OS, Windows Vista was massively unpopular, Windows 7 is effectively Vista with a new coat of paint, same with Windows 8 / 10, even down to drivers from the unpopular OS working with the "good" OS, I'm sure you'll have noticed that games at times get confused as to which OS their on (Ultra Street Fighter 4 for example if benched will claim it's running on a build of Windows 8, in windows 10) but under the hood those good OS's 7/10 have tons of Vista/8 in them but without the features that users complained about most strongly.... and 2 of the features that were hated were the names Vista and windows 8, Microsoft would have been better off pulling the same idea and old yellow'ing the X1 name.

PS4 down again, NS up and its weekly lead on it grows to a more significant amount. Not now in the dead period, but in Autumn PS4 will really need a price drop.

Why wouldn't the next gen XB console come out in 2019 then if it would end up more like the 360 era? Zen or Zen 2, Navi, PCIe 4.0, cheaper SSD's, etc, are all going to be on the consumer market in the next couple of months. Why would MS wait until holiday 2020 if they could have launched late 2019? Maybe the 7nm yields still aren't high enough yet and the costs of losses would be too much this soon? Maybe they are waiting for 7nm+ on euv and there is a logical reason why they are doing so? Maybe TSMC just doesn't have the capacity or is booked solid this year? Why would they use Zen and not Polaris or Vega, when Zen 2 and Navi are about to launch? Maybe because they would have had to pay a lot to get Zen on 7nm and Navi moved up so it was ready in time? Maybe they didn't want to pay that, or it happened as fast as possible anyway, but they also didn't want to try and have to use another semi custom Polaris or Vega? Maybe the costs are too high overall for everything right now and so they decided to wait a year? Maybe they feel the power and tech narrative is super important, and even if they couldn't best PS5, being as close as possible is important, considering what happened with XB1? Who's to say 2020 is the right time since that will only be 3 years since XB1X? How long is long enough, or too long between consoles? There's a tonne of reasons and more as to why launching in 2019 may not have made sense and would have been a bad idea, even with the unfortunate position XB1 would be in at this point without XB1X.

You're focusing too much on the costs, and assuming the best, when time line, performance, marketing, and brand image would be just as important if not more. While MS wouldn't suffer the same way Sega did due to their online infrastructure, in terms of hardware, it would likely end up a Dreamcast. There's even articles about Halo supposedly being proposed for PS4, and now Phil is talking Gears 5 potentially. Why do that if you're planning on selling enough of your own hardware?

I focused on the cost/performance, as every console manufacturer does. About the timeline and brand image, well, anything is better than what they have now, and they certainly would market the heck out of it.

Can you stop with that Dreamcast crap, please? That's simply not comparable. If you want to compare, then take a console who launched early, were comparatively weaker and didn't got pulled out after a year or so, like Megadrive/Genesis, Saturn, or Wii U. And as you can see with the inclusion of the Megadrive/Genesis, that's no guarantee to be a flop.

Yes, they are talking about bringing their games to PS4. But that was more or less the plan all along: Originally, the Xbox was created to promote PC gaming, and more specifically, DirectX (which is exclusively on Windows as opposed to OpenGL), hence the name of the console. Don't forget Microsoft is a software company, and only got into hardware with Xbox. What they wanted is to sell software through Xbox - but it turns out, that they don't necessarily need their console to sell the software.

In fact, since you kept talking about Dreamcast, I expect them to pull a Dreamcast in the way that Microsoft is going to stop their console division and simply becomes a software publisher again. However, unlike the Dreamcast, sales or financial losses will have nothing to do with that decision - just that it's not necessary anymore for their plans.

Would you prefer the PS2 instead? Are we going to assume it would have turned out more like that?

PS wanted to have cross play with the 360 and MS told them to get bent. I wonder why when PS was willing to hand XB exactly what they wanted, they rejected it, only to then pay for it with XB1, then implemented cross play, and had to seriously push to get PS to join, in the most minor partial way possible. Maybe just maybe, when MS was selling enough consoles, they were going to remain headed in that direction, until they got stomped by PS4. Then just by chance, they decided they would take another direction with much less solidified competition where they could more easily get their foot in the door. Now they want to put their first party games on the largest solidified console platform? Sounds a lot like someone doesn't think they can sell enough consoles to make it worth their while, like another ghost of console past.

So because MS saw the potential downside to selling consoles in the future, partially because of what has happened to other consoles in the past, they changed their direction, and that makes it completely different than Sega? I agree it won't be identical to how things ended for DC, but it would certainly have similarities. It's not like Sega could have done what XB is doing to change direction, and it's not like MS is looking to offer games on other platforms like Sega does.

WTF? I never said that! I said that their plan was to sell software from the get-go. They just found out, that they don't need their own console to do so effectively, and the original plan of pushing DirectX didn't work this gen at all, just look how many new AAA PC releases are not DirectX 12 titles even though it's mandated on their own console.

About your first paragraph: Again, it's just because they want to sell software. They are the opposite of Nintendo in that regard: Microsoft produces hardware to sell software, while Nintendo produces games to sell hardware.

Microsoft could have sold quite a bit better if they kept all their IP for themselves. Just imagine how well the XBO could have sold in Japan if they just kept Minecraft exclusive for them. Hellblade and Cuphead are on the Switch already for some time now, and Crash Bandicoot is coming to Smash. They are also opening up to other platforms on PC, not just on consoles. You no longer have to buy the games in Microsofts store, you can get them on Steam and GOG (not using Epic, so not sure about there), too.

In short, they want to make their games accessible to absolutely everyone and not just those with an Xbox live account (you need one to shop in their store on PC). Why? Because they are in the business to sell software, and being on all platforms guarantees, that more people could buy their games.