Digital sales are only going to continue to rise unless something catastrophic happens, like the internet falling apart. Especially as console prices drop and more of your average consumer who prefers digital purchases enter the ecosystem.
So...Do you back the idea or no?
Because CPU-dependant things are far less scalable than GPU-dependant things, for example, everything(AFAIK) still runs on a desktop version of X1's gpu, but a lot of games simply don't run on even better cpus, than jaguar. In numbers, GPU scale - ~15 times, CPU - ~5, at best, jaguar is at absolute bottom right now, PS5 CPU could be 6 times more powerful, with 4 times, imo, being given.
Scorpio comes out before ps5 and by how many years we don't know.
2-3 years, 2, most likely, since, 7nm Zen(~= full blown 14nm desktop Zen that Scorpio won't have) - check, Na'vi - check, HBM - check, (somewhat)mature techprocess - check, it might be not worth waiting another year(for what?) from a timing perspective, especially if targeting $499, ~190W from the get go.
There could be tens of millions of scorpios sold with just slower zens and gpus attached.
"Could be" is the key word, i don't see why there would be. "Just slower Zens", but still not up to par(Switch also got Maxwell(or Pascal), but it won't make it run games that run on Titans), that alone screams about how unlikely it is, even if it is possible(think not, i haven't seen anything regarding low-power Zen), post from June that might help to illustrate my logic:
Look, here's the thing, even if Sony releases the most fantastic, theoretically impossible, PS5 next year, total reset won't happen anyway until the next decade starts(and by that time shining 7nm(it's should look way better than 14nm hardware does now, especially for -) consoles become a reality, rendering 14nm PS5(Scorpio?) redundant and even harmful financially), and that's even with Sony actively pushing it
Zen requires way more investment, yet doesn't warrant any return at such stage.
It will be much easier to design for scorpio and port down to xboxone/ps4 and up to ps5 .
I don't see how, in order to make sure it even works(especially since your version of Scorpio has Zen in it), devs would still have to focus on a PS4/X1 versions first, and why would anyone, other than few select devs even design for Scorpio first anyway? It's infinitely unlikely to ever get larger active paying audience than PS4(P)/X1.
Developers also wouldn't want to give up any installed base to design games exclusively for a new system that sells 0 games. Look at how poor the switches line up is at launch.
There is already millions upon millions in "Zen-based tier", PC gamers, plus i'm not saying everyone would just abandon everything the minute PS5 comes out, i'm saying no one would stop half-way for the reasons already mentioned.
P.S. I'm not interested in arguing, merely expressing my opinion, this situation is all sorts of mind-boggling to me, and while i do go into detail where one can be easily wrong, to illustrate at the core this topic is pretty fundamental and it doesn't change overnight.
