At least you were some what right.. (kind of.)

Such a move will lead to a fractured experience for gamers and cause massive discontent. This will damage the game industry as a mass market enterprise and possibly cause it to crash as gamers desert it in disgust.

I don’t think an XB1.5 is an option for MS. Where Sony’s PS4 is an excellent game console design that can be expanded every 3 years with a Neo upgrade, the XB1 is a multimedia console at heart. The base design is wrong and is holding it back.

So while the PS4 Neo can stay inside the PS4 gen with an expansion, the next Xbox will need a radical redesign using a new game focussed architecture, and that means a new gen with no backwards compatibility. MS are forced go for a XB2 rather than a XB1.5, bringing their next gen early due to mistakes they made with the XB1 design.

A next gen XB2 does not necessarily mean it will be more powerful than the PS4 Neo, because both companies are tied to the hardware components currently available from the suppliers. PS4 Neo is already going to use the best that is currently available within the console price range. The new advanced AMD chips for example are the limiting factor for both companies.

So it’s probably a case of MS playing catch by bringing out an XB2 that is equal to a PS4 Neo in terms of hardware spec and gaming focus. That will be great news for all gamers on both sides so we can have healthy competition in the gaming industry again.