Dual purpose is not necessarilly an issue, but it sometimes do have some consequences on the gaming value. Either in price or performance.
I believe the PS3 was partly more expensive at launch because of the inclusion of Blu Ray and some other non gaming features. Also because of BR we got it one year late in the US and almost one year and a half late in EU without the performance benefits of a one year "newer" console compared to the 360. It was prohibitively more expensive too
The One also sacrificed some of its BOM on the inclusion of camera and seamless TV viewing, which also required some performance overhead while the console was more expensive than the PS4. In addition it makes someone assume that a lot of the R&D budget went to the TV and Camera aspects of the console.
Both of these examples suffered in the market and the gamer did not get value from the extra cost and/or delays for the gaming experience
There will always be an element of risk involved with pushing boundaries or attempting to change the game, such has always been the nature of the game. I have found that there have been a great deal of many failures from pushing the progression and advancement of things in any industry, and a lot of that failure can be attributed to a great deal of many different factors, and at times we saw winners, and we saw losers, but one thing that has always stayed true is that those who failed to innovate or change at all were guaranteed death.
It is often easier to point at the reasons why we should not do something vs why we should do something. There is great purpose in what MS is trying to achieve, and the purpose lines up with the rest of their business plans which is attempting to provide services at scale. Not only do they have experience in this area, but they have the infrastructure and the experience to make this happen.
I have no doubt that it is critical to look back on the past and see how things have failed, but fear of failure is not a reason to not pursue change, at least as a shareholder, if Balmer and team were still at the wheel, we'd see windows decline into nothingness as he was completely unwilling to adapt to the changing markets, and I would never have invested in a leader whose sole purpose was to set the company on autopilot and expend all their resources in trying to lock down their existing customers.
Having said that it's always easy to point out in the past where trying to innovate had failed them. But we seldom look at where innovation is largely what made them successful. Any company today can be disruptive, you no longer need to be a giant to have sway in the industry, the change of pace has only gotten faster, and stagnation only more dangerous.
2013 to 2018 there has been significant changes in the way things are done. MS uses their azure compute centres to simulate real game code on simulated chips before they are even baked, this is a dramatic difference from the way chips are designed today. We see that positive effects of that in the Xbox One X console, it's certainly performing exactly where they want it to be and some. The way computing in general is changing and rapidly, algorithms which used to be the answer for everything are now sharing their space with Machine Learning. Trained models are more complex and significantly more effective and faster with specific problems often where evaluation would take much too long to afford. The way silicon is made is slowing down; Moore's Law is no longer in applicable. Companies must find a way to extract more value out of their manufacturing process. And MS have found a way to circumvent one of the major challenges console manufacturers all face, which is that traditionally they must set a lower bar of performance for all their silicon to ensure they are getting effective yield from manufacturing. Thus why we see redundant CUs. But because MS needs not only to build 4x the number of chips for its cloud strategy, it can now effectively bin the best performing chips (no CU loss) and sell those as consoles, and put the lower yield chips into server banks. Even if MS and Sony came to exactly the same conclusions on hardware with Sony using the traditional method, MS would win performance by default because they'd be selling the higher binned version of it as the base model.
Aside from changes in the way business is done, MS has changed the way they work, vertical silos are no more, and the company is working across teams, providing a level of integration never seen before in the company.
But most importantly, is that MS has been much better at learning from their mistakes.
They communicate their plans earlier, hell their planning is much better and much longer term, they address concerns earlier, all of this before the actual product launches, a stark difference from their 2013 launch. They are not given the same blind faith their competitors are given. MS does not have the luxury of Apple in that they can just announce and launch their products the same day and the faithful will buy it en masse. I guess to a degree, with Sony openly stating that they are trying to emulate Apple in this regard, they are not given the same blind faith Sony fans have for their console of choice.
No, MS has to constantly prove it's value repeatedly, and their strategy of communicating their plans early gets discussion like these out earlier. It gives journalists time to absorb and think about what MS is trying to do. It gives the consumers/fans/haters/warriors their time to criticize. It lets them figure out their communication plan from the feedback. And by the time launch is happening, they've found a way to address many of the major concerns that gamers had and they go for it.
As I'v stated earlier, I'll heed the warnings. But we're supposed to be talking the technical of what can be achieved given what we know and ideally with as many realistic variables to account for (that at least we know of to account for). I find too often we are derailed by counter arguments that conveniently leave out details or past discussion in hopes to make their own arguments appear stronger.
