If MS are honest about wanting to move to a more constantly evolving platform, then no, it's not a mid generation refresh because the traditional generations of the kind Sony are explicit about wishing to stay with don't apply.
They can't look to simply expand X1 in one particular area because Scorpio has to exist beyond the X1, and look to the constantly evolving PC platform. Neo is a parallel branch of the PS4, designed to attract or retain users in the later part of the generation. Again, Sony have been explicit about this. Different goals.
I'm not talking about specs here, I'm talking about the way the platforms move forwards. Sony and MS are not approaching this in the same manner.
There are a number of ways to combine memory and bus width. For example, 10 gHz GDDR5X on a 256-bit bus would give 320 GB/s and allow 8GB, and would likely be cheaper than 12 GB GDDR5 on a 384-bit bus. In that PC space that was Nvidia's preferred option.
MS wanting more memory is an absolute requirement if they want the higher quality assets that that PC games already support, and they've stated categorically that they do want to do this. I don't see increased memory as an accident, just as keeping it the same wasn't an accident for Sony. MS need more memory to achieve their particular 2017 goal, while Sony didn't to achieve their particular 2016 goal.
With Zen not being ready, I'm inclined to agree that Sony couldn't have done significantly better for a 399 console in 2016. By late 2017 I'm hoping that Zen will be the CPU and that production and yield increases will keep the cost of a larger chip down and allow clocks to creep up within the same power envelope.
