You are advocating for a theoretical PlayStation 6 to have significantly weaker specs than the PS5. And I will rephrase since you've decided to turn this into a semantics war.
Has the console industry been in this position before? I've given you examples of comparatively weaker specs or at worst on par. If that's not enough then agree to disagree.
By mentioning "high-res 4k textures" you seem to have a misunderstanding of the relationship between texture assets in a game and the display resolution of said game. You can use a 120x120 texture or a 2000x2000 one in a game running at 480p, 1080p, 1440p, and 4K equally. Game development is a radically different thing now than it used to be. Artists are more accustomed to working with far more user friendly development tools. No one is writing any assembly code anymore. The budget is not going to magically get smaller, and the dev time won't get shorter by running a game at a lower resolution and frame rate.
Then how were games made quicker last gen and the gen before that, if not using lower Res or whatever, assets? Going forwards isn't always progress. Sometimes stopping or going backwards Is the best foot forwards.
There is a general expectation from game consumers of the fidelity of the games they will spend their time on, and cutting corners to make games cheaper to make and generally worse, is not going to be a recipe for success.
This is bullshit and you know it. Based on this gen, those consumers have whole heartedly rejected games of higher graphical fidelity, leading to some huge bombs. Most games that succeed aren't those of super high graphics. The switch has sold 140+ million consoles and 1-1.5 billion pieces of software.
Where as Xbox, with the most powerful console in the world (their words) has sold like shit and their games have been complete flops.
Hellblade 2, arguably the best looking game this gen, flopped. Horizon and GoW, while great games, sold more on PS4, a lower powered machine than PS5.
Black ops 6 is cross gen.
Xbox and playstation owners aren't adopting the next gen at the rate one would expect.
The industry is struggling and suffering to try and appease this phantom market who want super realistic graphics, when the vast majority of those games fail, big time.
Meanwhile, indie games, low Res/low graphics games and the switch are cleaning house and making billions.
Mobile games make more than the pc and console industry combined. Yet they're shite graphically.
If you work in the industry mate, your head is being filled full of boardroom lies and bean counters fantasies.
