On one hand, it's obviously the smart thing to keep your architecture standard in a world where most games are released cross-platform. Consoles are essentially just PCs with a set spec and in a clean wrapper at this point. But on the other hand it's also a bit disappointing that it's not really an option to make strange/interesting new architectures for a console.

Consoles are one of the last holdovers from the era where computers were designed with the hardware and software built and integrated from the bottom up into a cohesive package. Where they'll do a new one only every 7 years or so, and users just expect to have to buy new software for them every time. So it sounds like a space where they could get away with weird innovations and risks, but because of the need to keep cross-platform development feasible, it's not really an option.

I don't know. I see why it is the way it is, but I'd like to live in a world where consoles could get away with weirder things. Nintendo has kind of occupied that space with their touch screens and motion controls and whatnot, but the Switch is also more standard than ever before. Probably a net good for consumers though, with how much software is able to be ported to it.