In case you’ve missed all of the news and rumors so far, here’s the gist of the situation with the Playstation Neo. Sony is reportedly working on a new version of the Playstation 4, with improved CPU and GPU components. In theory, this console will be able to handle 4K video output and VR gaming more capably than the current version. However, the new system’s improvements will not be relegated only to these particular functions. Starting in October, all Playstation 4 games will be REQUIRED to have a “Neo” mode, with improved resolution, visual effects, and framerate beyond what the original Playstation 4 can provide.

As you might expect, this has caused something of an uproar in the Playstation community. The PS4 has sold roughly 40 million units to date. That’s a lot of owners who are now seeing their highest-end console as obsolete. Of course, in Sony’s supposed documentation, they insist that this is not the case. The Playstation Neo is meant to coexist with the base-PS4 unit, with all games playable on both consoles, just better on the Neo.

That matter has fallen mostly on deaf ears, as PS4 owners feel like they’ve been duped. Typically, a console is expected to be relevant for at least 6 years, and the PS3 was partially marketed around the idea of a “10 year lifecycle.” So going by the precedent the company set in the past, the “upgrading,” if not outright-replacement, of the Playstation 4 only three years into its lifecycle is a betrayal of their implicit agreement with owners.

But that’s the thing about “implicit” agreements: they don’t really hold water. Sony made no promise that they WOULDN’T do this. There was no contract signed when people picked up their PS4s promising that they’d be relevant for a full console generation. Sony may have upset people’s expectations, but precedent or none, owners placed those expectations there in the first place.

The bigger problem with the Neo, though, has been largely ignored. Like I mentioned above, Sony is making the claim that the existence of the Neo has no negative impact on current Playstation 4 owners. They’ll still have access to all of the games, and the existence of a more powerful console, however frustrating that may be, does not mean that the components in the old PS4 are any weaker than they were before the announcement. But they’re severely understating the effect that the Neo has on game development.

Typically, for multi-platform games, there’s a “lead platform” which is used for the original build, and then separate, smaller teams are tasked with tweaking the code for different platforms. It’s just the nature of the process; game designers can’t be constantly building several different versions of their game while they make changes. The ports have to be built late in the process, when the majority of the code is complete. If the publisher and developer plan things right and allocate enough competent people, then the porting is invisible. If they don’t, then you run into games that simply don’t work on a particular platform, like Batman: Arkham Knight on PC, or Bayonetta on PS3.

With a typical multiplatform game, this is now a whole extra SKU that they have to port to, and frankly, there’s no way in hell they’re going to be hiring a full extra team for the Neo port. It’s far more likely that they will have one team working on the Neo port, and then one or two people will take THAT code and downscale it to the PS4. There will be little testing and optimization.

Things are even more theoretically problematic with first-party titles. A game like Uncharted 4 only looks as incredible as it does because it is painstakingly tailored to the Playstation 4. Every strength and limitation inherent in the hardware was taken into account, and the code was manipulated to be as pretty as it could be on the existing hardware. But with the Neo in the mix, this type of specification is either impossible, or compromised.

Odds are, first-party titles will still be catered toward a particular hardware specification, but when developers have the original Playstation 4 and the Playstation Neo to choose from, which are they more likely to go with? The smart money is on the Neo. The video game industry runs on hype, and one of the biggest ways that companies hype their games is by showing the most visually stunning versions of their titles that they can. The need to impress is very real, and has lead to misleading marketing like the infamous Watch_Dogs E3 trailer in the past. Given this necessity of marketing, if a first-party developer wants their game to look impressive, it seems obvious that they’re going to cater it to the Neo.

This is where the existence of the Neo is really going to hurt original PS4 owners. If first parties are going to be focused on the Neo and third-parties will be porting base PS4 games from their Neo ports, then we’re not looking at a situation where the Neo’s better hardware is simply another option. The existence of the Neo has a very real impact on the quality of base PS4 games, and the games released over the next few years will not be as impressive or well-optimized on the base system as they would have been had the Neo never entered the marketplace.

In a way, I understand where Sony is coming from with the Neo. Hardware is improving at such an impressive clip that the PS4 was on-par with a mid-end gaming PC by the time it released, and has since been pretty heavily eclipsed by the PC market. Plus, 4K is slowly growing in popularity, VR is looking promising, and the current PS4 is ill-equipped to deal with either. But by segmenting their gaming audience, Sony is hurting their most die-hard fans. One of the selling points of a console is that it’s an all-in-one box that will remain relevant with no upgrades for several years. If Sony expects its owners to upgrade every few years or be saddled with sub-par ports, then they risk losing their most die-hard fans to the PC marketplace. After all, if you’re expected to upgrade anyway, then why not go with the newest and best experience available?