This has been MS’s
stated goal for a while. Do away with “generations” and have constant hardware iterations. Of course, XOX didn’t work out the way they wanted in that regard, but still the XSX’s very modular design would allow for the easy swapping in/out of components with each refresh, if that’s the direction they chose to take. It fits well with their backwards-compatibility focus, it’s hyper visor OS approach, and it’s stated desire to be able to claim the upper and lower ends and have the “most powerful” as well as the “cheapest” console on the market.
The problem with all of this, of course, is that it ignores the strength of the console as a platform. A single spec allows for much more economical development and much more performant optimisation. They want to treat the console space like the PC space and, to date, it really hasn’t worked out for them. I think they’ll keep trying. Single-spec optimisations can, maybe, be overcome with incremental power upgrades, but generation-specific features / gimmicks have worked pretty damn well for both Sony and Nintendo.
Yeah, I think it would hurt them. Mostly, I think this because Nintendo and Sony are not pursuing this line of hardware development, and they seem to understand the console business better than either Microsoft or myself. I’ll defer to their judgement on this one.