In saying that a Radeon 7850/7870 can run the same games as a Playstation 4/Xbox One for the most part with similar visuals. Some games will perform and look better, some will look and perform worst, really comes down to developer effort and competence.

It's when you start pushing those higher quality HBAO over SSAO, the higher tessellation factors, the higher quality Anti-Aliasing and start pushing 60fps with full 16x anisotropic filtering, ray tracing, superior shadowing and lighting that the hardware demands on PC start to skyrocket.

And sometimes a game engine level optimization on console even translates over to PC... And now that PC's have lower-level abstraction layers, the advantage consoles have for any given hardware has lessened.

Where the Playstation 4, Switch and Xbox One take a step ahead is with those exclusives, something like Horizon: Zero Dawn is technically impressive... Or Links Awakening with it's pretty awesome material shaders or Gears of War 5 with it's geometric complexity and post process pipeline.

And the PC has StarCitizen, which leverages the PC's abundant amounts of memory to create such sheer scale never before seen in a game.
It's the exclusives that make the hardware for every platform shine.

We know this for a fact because except for Medium, everything Ms has shown will run on Xbox One as well. 

Isn't it normal that next gen consoles do kinda the same things as current gen, but bigger and better? If that's not enough than what are you seriously expecting? To me it seems you're constantly pretending you don't know what next gen games are traditionally about. A new console generations is not a completely new concept and we both know what it usually means.

MS is just trying to rewrite the rules. Instead of doing a hard reset, they are making sure everyone can play their games in the Xbox ecosystem. That's why nothing they've shown requires cutting edge hardware or a fast SSD, even if it is skipping current gen consoles. Take Dustborn for example that was just announced for Series X, ps5 and pc. Maybe I exaggerate when I say potato pc, but just look at the pc requirements and you'll see it doesn't require SSD or a high-end gpu: https://store.steampowered.com/app/721180/Dustborn/

If you weren't disappointed with what was shown at the Series X event, then fine. But maybe that's why you're telling yourself that the IO performance gap is no biggie and everything Sony showed would run on current gen too, let alone the Series X.

Truth is that we don't know how these consoles will compare until we see the games. Until then all we have is this MS exec talking about elevators and Epic saying the ps5's SSD tech is so impactful, they've rewritten their core I/O subsystems for UE5 with the ps5 in mind. Is the MS exec a complete idiot that doesn't know what he's talking about, did Sony spend a fortune on overdeveloping their SSD and pay Epic to say those things? Who knows, but MS really needs to show something really impressive on July if they want to change the "most powerful next gen console" narrative.

Dude, you have spent MONTHS claiming the exact opposite of that statement.

Oh so now it’s “everything would run fine on a HDD.. except this.” And “but this doesn’t require a ‘fast’ SSD”. Keep shifting those goal posts, friend. 

I don’t know or care what you think about what qualifies a game as next gen or not because your definition is constantly changing to suit whatever Sony is doing and furthermore you’re the only one who was making a big deal about cross gen and “real next gen games” anyway. 

What is the IO gap? How much does the XVA improve XSX?  Again you’re speaking factually about things right after claiming no one knows. Also yeah we can only judge the games. Neither has shown anything super impressive yet imho. The most impressive stuff was not gameplay for both, Hellblade II and HFW. But that doesn’t mean the games won’t be good. I was more impressed with games like Little Devil Inside and that K game and both of those are cross gen, your literal nightmare. Funny how that works.

Cant wait to see your definitions change again after the July and August events.

What does the logo and the controller have to do with how the press responded to the actual ps5 games? Ratchet & Clank simply did things that we haven't seen before on that kind of scale. That's why the general public and sites like DF were excited over it. If you don't agree then just show me 1 example of a game that does anything like it. On the flip side, show me one game during Series X's reveal that doesn't look like it could be on current gen? 

Who said anything about the press? You said general consensus and “the masses”. Seems like the opposite of the gaming press but hey, that’s what happens when you’re shifting the goal posts constantly. You mentioned the “feel” of next gen games, I’m just pointing out that even when Sony had only showed a logo, people were going crazy. Of course they’re going to go crazy when actual games are shown.

I already told you multiple times Ratchet was impressive. What words exactly are you looking for me to say here? Let me know what will make you feel better. I already mentioned games that have you shifting to other worlds or levels, and I admitted they are on a smaller scale because PS5 has better specs. So are you again saying true next gen means it just looks better and has bigger scale? Because as others have pointed out, you have months worth of posts showing otherwise.

Also how do you feel about some of the most impressive looking stuff being cross gen, that has to sting after your XSX crusade.

Press, the masses whatever man. Anyone, including my half blind granny could give games like Ratchet & Clank and HFW one look and tell the difference from current gen, and nobody would have to explain her why. It has nothing to do with "feeling", its supposed to be about what people see on the screen. "Feeling" is the word Phil Spencer used when he said it is challenging to demonstrate the true leap that the Xbox Series X will provide over the Xbox One because people need to "feel" the 60fps. I know you'll say I'm placing Phil's quote out of context but that is exactly what happened during the Series X event when nothing they showed looked like a true leap over current gen. 

Not really sure which cross gen games you're talking about. There were a couple of cool ones but it were obviously HFW and Ratchet & Clank that got people exited about next gen. Doesn't mean they'll be better games than something like Little Devil inside, but next gen games is typically what people want to see when a new console gets announced.