[megameter]

One hypothesis I saw months ago from a techtuber channel was that the cheaper model will support a game streaming subscription business down the line, making the hardware itself mostly a content delivery box. If true, cheap hardware with a cheap subscription will upend the existing console biz models.

That specific idea works to the extent that streaming games over the internet pans out(so far, countless overhyped failures). But a version of the plan where devs are given two SKU targets up-front would in fact be an evolution of how the last generation played out, where a mid-generation refresh happened and turned out not to be a complete waste of time.

Being able to launch with price discrimination reflects on how gaming tech isn't moving all that quickly now. The graphics fidelity is still going up but in a controlled fashion: higher screen resolutions, bigger textures, heavier shaders. The biggest underlying technical change of the coming generation is an emphasis on fast SSDs, and even a $299 SKU can have one of those.

[rdtwo]

I wonder if one will do 4K and the other is 1080p limited. Seems like 4K one might be a too big of a power bump so maybe 2k with upscaling