If consoles only have 24GB next gen that'll suck. By today's standards 16GB is pitiful especially considering it's shared between cpu and gpu. On PC today I am seeing a lot more games require 20-25GB RAM alone and as much as 13GB VRAM. Fortnite, a game that is running on UE5.1, uses 19GB RAM and 11GB VRAM and that's not even at 4K (I play at 1440p). More and more games will be using UE5 and by 2027/2028 there is no way that 24GB is going to be enough.
32GB seems more likely. I could see a console running with ~20GB to system and 10-12GB for VRAM. With the enhancements of UE5 and if people want more raytracing and to keep 60fps or even play at 120fps then you're going to need 32GB for sure.
Not sure about the CPU/GPU side of things. I suppose a Zen 5 isn't too crazy and 8c/16t is more than enough for gaming now but I'm not sure if it'll be good in 10-13 years from now when we're well into next gen. a 12c/24t would be nice to have.
SSDs need to be 2TB standard. Prices of SSDs are dropping hard so there is no excuse for anything less come 2027/2028. As for speed, now that AMD is on PCIE5, then SSDs could go up to about 14-15GB/s. No PCIE5 drives exist today as far as I'm aware. 10-11GB/s will probably be a safe bet. When faster drives come out you should be able to swap it out. PS5 comes with a 5.5GB/s drive which is quite slow but you can replace it with a 7GB/s one.
I don't understand why both Sony and MS just don't have some cheaper RAM pool to just run the OS and then keep the more expensive faster RAM for games. The only reason I can come up with is them being limited to how much RAM the OS can have, whereas if they are taking it from the main pool they can just take some more of that RAM to expand the size of the OS if they need.
We heard alot from both MS and Sony about the ability to use the SSD as virtual RAM. The next generation will have two to three times the speed of this generation, so quite possibly this will help keep the need for more RAM down.
What I did was look at what VRAM thr highest GPUs have at this point.
The 4090 has 83 tflops, and only has 24gb of RAM. I don't see any future where either of the next generation of consoles having anywhere near 83tflops, so I don't see a need for the consoles to have a greater amount than that.
The OS won't get too much bigger than they are now, so couldn't imagine the need for greater.
Personally I think the main improvement over just raw power will be specialist hardware to help the games look better outside of pure grunt.
We saw some of this in the XSXS with hardware VRS, Sampler Feedback Streaming and lower precision abilities for ML.
Maybe down the track AMD will have FSR built in with some sort of hardware addition to their GPUs.
Better dedicated Ray Tracing accelerators will be a given.
Things like this can I.prove the fidelity of the game without adding alot to the heat output or die size.
Efficiency gains will also be a bigger thing going forward as well. I fully expect the PS6 will have hardware VRS, a Sampler Feedback Streaming alternative without doubt.