Seperate from the confusion of knowing the box exists, I'm just confused what their intentions are with naming future boxes."gung-ho" is overselling it. i thought their strategy was obviously moving to the iterative hardware cycle,.. looks like for playstation i was wrong if the rumors are to be believed. lockhart (again if rumors are to be believed) is no better than xbox one x (for fudge sake these names are confusing) and mandatory support should be discontinues in 2023 when the next entry releases. only 2 systems of BC (6 year life cycle) should be mandatory. if lockhart is mandatory support for the next 6 years than that is bull shame.
In the past you've been pretty gung-ho about ending generations and moving towards a steady release of new hardware like with phones. Are you worried every game will be forced to support lockhart even after a few years?
Also I'm not sure how many games will use next gen power for gameplay anyway. Sure there will be a lot of titles that do innovative things but the big focus right now is on techniques (ray traced reflections, global illumination, shadows, machine learning animations, machine learning game AI) that are easy to cut/scale back for under powered hardware. Just look at the Witcher 3 Switch port for example. That game was built as a next gen showcase but they were still able to get it running on a handheld.
Series S for lockhart sure seems likely at this point. Update both every few years.