@PlywoodStick AMD's Polaris s aimed at the mid/lower end with its initial release. Its high end GPU's are likely to be called 'Vega' and expected at the end of 2016/early 2017 with 'Navi' following on in 2018.

Polaris is certainly targeting volume and are hoping that they can achieve this by targeting consoles, laptops/notebooks etc - the most popular sources of gaming and entertainment. According to AMD, very few people have a PC that can meet VR specs or buy graphics cards. Its only a dedicated few (comparatively) who do buy cards. By making Polaris more affordable and available in a wider range of devices, AMD are hoping to capture more than just the gaming market but also anyone who is interested in VR - it does have uses outside of gaming - education, social and no doubt the 'porn' market too.

If you read what the aim of Polaris is - to bring fluid graphics/performance, VR and multi-media to small form devices, and console gaming performance to laptops. This sounds perfect for consoles. Its opting to use Samsung chips and the FinFET architecture means these can be clocked 65% faster or be around 70% more efficient. Obviously if you clock it up, you lose that power efficiency - you can't have both. I expect though, people will find a balance to suit them - Maybe raise the clock speed by 45% and save 20% or so power - That extra processing speed could mean less shaders and therefore less memory bandwidth

This is quite an interesting video explaining how the new architecture and size could be optimised to match a 980 ti or at least a 980 from such a small GPU.

To me it makes sense for Microsoft to drop nVidia. There is no doubt that nVidia are a very big name but pound for pound, there performance isn't the best. Using nVidia could well of added to the overall cost of the console.

I do think that MS could release a 'new' console. With its Win10/UWP focus, a new console is likely to play any Xbox game. The way they are trying to tie all their devices together, I would expect that a new console wouldn't split the user base - 360 games would be playable with 360 and XB1 owners, party chat available across all devices etc. It could even use Oculus Rift as its form of VR too - the XB1 has no chance with its GPU.

It would make sense to use Polaris in the NX and PS4. Its certainly the next generation of GPU's and if Nintendo keep things 'relatively' simple in its architecture, the NX could get 3td Party games in exactly the same way that XB and PS do now. Whether that's important to Nintendo, I don't know. They seem happy to branch off and be more of a 'niche' and individual product rather than trying to compete head-on with MS and Sony.

Obviously the benefits to Sony are clear. Its trying to launch its own VR headset and I do feel its PS4 is unlikely to compete with Oculus because of the hardware. It may be OK for walking Sims, on rails shooters, single enemy sword fighting games, basic puzzlers etc. RIGS is a 'small 3v3 arena' game - static maps and doesn't have big draw distances but I have heard that it does have a bit of movement lag and the frame rate drops - although its still got a few months to optimise it. I can't see it coping with something like CoD's 6v6 (or 9v9) bigger maps. Even if you have little interest in VR, Sony would still like to sell the console to you so adding 4k support will appeal to the growing 4k TV owners. As I said the extra power is still unlikely to run games at 4k but could see games at 1440 - something a 4K TV would see the benefits of.

I don't think MS or Sony had much choice but to release their gen 8 consoles when they did. The gen 7 consoles wouldn't (and haven't lasted) another 2 years but the hardware and technical advancements weren't ready or affordable either. Now they are in another difficult position, struggle for the next couple of years and release their 'next' gen or release a new console and annoy their fans - especially late adopters. I don't know if you own either but its very difficult to see them last 4-5yrs (30months until the next release and 2 years transition afterwards).

Nintendo are in a better position. Its games tend to be first party anyway and the Wii U has been out longer too. Its only 'competing' with its self and created that 'niche'. It appeals to PS an XB owners because its different where as PS and XB are very similar. Maybe by using Polaris it could get a lot of the multi-plat releases and still keep its niche because of the first party software and some innovative and 'unique' feature - typical of Nintendo.