Games that are 10+ years old are actually only of interest to 1-2% of potential users. MS is targeting the 100+ million gamers with their next gaming model who are mostly interested in new games.
I've been an Xbox fan since the beginning, collecting games with the idea that I'd play them all someday. Well, since then I've realized that I'm only interested in current games and I only play new ones.
Furthermore, if I still want to play an old game, there are emulators that are constantly improving.
With the current global reputation of the brand, Microsoft don't have 100+ million gamers to sell to with just Xbox gaming devices, be they traditional consoles or PC hybrids. The brand appeal simply isn't there and hasn't been since the 360 era. Also with all their games being Day 1 on PC gaming platforms like Steam, that further reduces the realistic addressable base of gamers a new Xbox can sell to, specifically if it's more of a traditional console.
BC is also important because we're talking about libraries people have spent money on. Whether they plan on ever playing those games again or not, they expect that library to come with them now, as a customer in the digital era. Losing access to that library because maybe only 2% will regularly go back to play those old titles, is a quick way to erode consumer faith in the brand as a whole. It would just become a needlessly negative talking point against MS and Xbox when they're in a position, where they don't need any more of such if they can help it.
As for emulators...well, those are a legal grey area. Not necessarily for the emulators themselves (although, say, the Switch & PS4 emulators ARE illegal because patents for those systems have not ran out (hasn't been 20 years) and at least the Switch is still readily commercially available), but because a lot of people are using them to play games they don't legally own, or are accessed illegally. Unfortunately that's a big component of the emulation scene on PC, but I say "unfortunate" only outside the content of super-rare or abandonware titles.
Like, if someone's using an emulator to play Psychic Force or even Panzer Dragoon Saga, with ISOs/ROMs from online, I can understand that. Those games either never got home ports, never got GOOD home ports, or are so rare and difficult to obtain legally it'll cost you hundreds of dollars if not thousands just to get your hands on them. Realistically, most people don't have the lifestyle to pay $1,000+ dollars for a decent copy of a single game, and if the publisher doesn't have the game on any modern systems or storefronts, emulation's your only real option.
But there are a good number of people who are using emulators to play illegal copies of current releases, too. Heck one of the emulators for Switch had a site distributing ISOs of BOTW and TOTK. Those are current games; I can't support that type of emulation because it's not like you're paying hundreds of thousands to get one of 500 copies of those games. They're readily available on the market, today, for anyone to buy. Same goes for even older entries in current IP where you know the publisher keeps current with that series, unless the old entries are extremely rare and not readily available anywhere else to purchase.
So that's a few years out. Development would already have been ongoing in the preliminary stage. I assume Sony and AMD are deeply engaged with each other already, and if it follows a similar path as the PS5 I suppose the PS6 would sport a Zen ~6-7 core depending on development and release date, and a custom RDNA 5 based core? Whatever that will look like. Storage might get a tad quicker too I suppose. Feels like it could well be a PS5 2.0. Not terribly exotic until you get into finer details.
In either case I'm going to assume that studios will target a range of resolutions from 1080p to1440p or thereabouts, and rely on up-scaling to get the rest of the way to 4K in most - if not all - cases.
Microsoft seems like the wild card, considering talk of both handhelds and speculation of standard-based boxes in lieu of their own. Certainly going to be interesting to see what happens there. Could Sony follow suit and make their own portable? If they want to be wild I wouldn't mind seeing them make their own version of the Meta Quest. Go all in on portable VR with a cable to use the PS6 for a massive performance boost?
Keep in mind that RDNA isn't going to really be a thing anymore going forward. AMD are unifying RDNA and CDNA into UDNA, so PS6's GPU will be based around that unified UDNA.
Which, IMO, does make the talk about a separate NPU a bit outdated, as CDNA would have fulfilled that. Maybe Microsoft go with a separate NPU depending on if the GPU switches to another vendor (i.e Intel?), but it seems very likely SIE will not go with a separate NPU for PS6. They prefer trying to integrate various components in their designs, historically speaking. Whereas Microsoft can weave a bit one way or another (i.e the eSRAM in XBO & DDR3 memory), tho maybe not to the degree of older console makers i.e SEGA during the 16-bit & 32-bit eras.
I do hope with PS6, SIE expand more on PNM ideas, with focus on smart processing near the memory in order to cut down on bus transaction. Which will mean they can reign in the total memory bandwidth needed, even capacity to some extent. Also hoping the next gen implements technologies that help really speed up game development and bring costs down. For example, I don't know how feasible it is to develop an AI-driven ASIC, drivers etc. that can auto-generate more or less detailed geometry & texture LODs based on a singular level provided to train on by devs during development (coming down to systems & tools the platform holder would develop to facilitate it).
Figure it would need to do things like understanding various file formats and have on-the-fly analytical capabilities, parse metadata related to the asset models & textures, get feedback on the framebuffer, player viewport, relative distance of objects in relation to player (and visibility i.e are the objects obscured, tho I think parts of the graphics pipeline for geometry culling calculation would pick up on that ahead of time) etc. Can something like that be set in time for a 2028 system? Don't really know.
Maybe some built-in hardware for smart AI graphics filters could enhance the experience too, and help out speeding up aspects of development the way raytracing does (or is meant to, in theory).
They already made a portable with the portal. I think they'll build on that as a complement to the PS6. Your PS6 can be your dedicated game server and you can play from anywhere in the world. For the hw architecture its still too early to tell but it will have the latest CPU and GPU architectures of the year it releases in.
Xbox seems to be flirting with becoming a third party publisher. This news just came out today:
Microsoft posted and removed a new Xbox UI image with Steam games listed.
www.theverge.com
So you can imagine the next gen Xbox may not be a closed system
SIE definitely need a portable option for next gen, but I think it needs to be more than just another PS Portal. They really need something that can provide some level of native gaming, that doesn't require the user needing a PS6 home console to stream to it, and doesn't completely rely on the cloud.
So, the rumors of a next-gen PS handheld being somewhere around PS4 Pro - base PS5 in general native ability, but supporting a feature set with PS6 (and leveraging things like more advanced PSSR to handle resolution downscaling), hopefully take shape. I don't see why SIE can't have such a portable at the higher-end of the SKU market (I think such a portable would probably cost at least $449) while having a cloud streaming-only lower-cost option as well.
Especially for markets like Japan where, let's face it, they really do need a portable option to help climb back some market share specifically for B2P titles. The key target for a native portable, IMO, should be the ability to play PS6 titles natively, albeit downscaled in resolution and potentially framerate. Making it as easy as possible for devs to implement that without having them risk design scope to target what the PS6 can truly do (although for games that are cross-gen, that worry becomes heavily mitigated).
