The big problem with the Xbox One was that it was underpowered because of the Kinect requirement, so they ditched Kinect then rebranded as the Xbox One S, throwing in a 4K Blu Ray player.
Still wasn’t enough, so the One X had full 4K capabilities.
If they had launched with the One X things would have looked a lot different.
I don’t know if I would see it as a pure money grab. Pretty sure game consoles, just like inkjet printers and the like are sold with zero or near zero profit (or even at a loss). The benefit the console manufacturer gains from the platform lock-in far outweighs whatever greed they might have trying to reap gains from the hardware. 10 year old hardware is roughly 30x slower in FLOPs, so we might be looking at a desire for better games or easier software development - I for sure would not envy the developer needing to target 10 year old hardware, though it’s not exactly unheard of.
I think I would be okay with 8-10 year iterations. 3-4 years is a ridiculous money grab. I haven’t owned an XBOX since the 360 though, so…
Historic generations were about 5 years…
The big problem with the Xbox One was that it was underpowered because of the Kinect requirement, so they ditched Kinect then rebranded as the Xbox One S, throwing in a 4K Blu Ray player.
Still wasn’t enough, so the One X had full 4K capabilities.
If they had launched with the One X things would have looked a lot different.
How did the Kinect factor into things in terms of power?
Microsoft required 10% of system resources be reserved for Kinect support, even in games that didn’t support Kinect features.
https://www.eurogamer.net/how-the-xbox-one-gpu-reserve-unlock-actually-works
That reduction in horsepower for the actual games showed up in reduced resolution and framerate.
Lifting that restriction allowed the Xbox One to reach parity with the PS4.
If Sony does what they did with the PS4, they’ll release a PS5 Pro next year and a PS6 in 2028. Pretty easy to follow at least.
I don’t know if I would see it as a pure money grab. Pretty sure game consoles, just like inkjet printers and the like are sold with zero or near zero profit (or even at a loss). The benefit the console manufacturer gains from the platform lock-in far outweighs whatever greed they might have trying to reap gains from the hardware. 10 year old hardware is roughly 30x slower in FLOPs, so we might be looking at a desire for better games or easier software development - I for sure would not envy the developer needing to target 10 year old hardware, though it’s not exactly unheard of.