I really wouldn’t put much stock into that presentation at this point; it’s a direct contradiction to what Andrew Goosen, and other hardware engineers at Xbox, have said about die shrinkages/improvements (perf or otherwise) vs. cost. Furthermore, those observations were all made before the worldwide pandemic hit and chip shortages resulted.
The One X and PS4 Pro were outliers meant to address a major deficiency in the original consoles’ designs: an incredible weak CPU. This generation doesn’t have any of the inherent flaws that led to the mid-gen refreshes from last gen; even when you consider the RT performance, it’s still far too early to determine how much is due to hardware versus poor optimization, especially considering how limited RT usage is on PC gaming as well.
Is it impossible that there will be mid-gen refreshes? Of course not, but all things considered, it’s extremely unlikely. I do not doubt that we see Slim versions owed to die shrinkages however.
People do, even though this is the very people who make these consoles. Andrew Goosen was pretty clear that it is getting harder to have a clear generation divide.
