The ps4 was as powerful as it could have possibly been for $399 at launch. We have seen what happens when consoles launch above that price and it isnt pretty. I mean you do realize Sony is a business and the goal of business is to make money right ?
Consider that the original xbox, the xbox 360, the ps2 (and ofc the ps3, but for the wrong reasons) was sold at a loss and that the ps4 wasn't.
Console games come at a premium (platform holder royalties) , that is why the hardware itself has always been subsidized , to sweeten the deal with a low entry price for high hardware value (to be made back multiple times in software sales)
Combine that with the fact that sony are now raking in the cash with the ps+ multiplayer fees sony could and historically should definitely have subsidized the ps4 hardware.
They could have done a lot better for 400 dollars.
There's also the fact that they took the AMD contract and went for an APU design, which significantly limited their options. There is no way they went for the jaguar cpu because it was a great choice,they probably went with it because that's the only thing amd could deliver in a lower power apu at the time.
It was a smaller jump than usual (gpu) and a much smaller jump than usual (cpu) and a regular jump ram wise. It started out less powerful relative to previous gens and is aging faster relative to previous gens (especially now with the jump to 14nm)
Then there's the fact that the demand for performance is higher now that VR is a thing and now that 4k tvs become mainstream.
You can argue about how important it is for a ps4 to be powerful (the wii u is weak as shit and nintendo are pumping out 60 fps games that play well and look good) , but it IS a lot less powerful than it could have been.
Honestly the ps4 released at a weird time.
-just in time for a doubling of vram density (great)
but
- midway through the 28nm generation
-using a gpu architecture that was already quite old and outdated
A ps4.5 using polaris (god knows what cpu, I guess a polaris+excavator apu? I doubt they have a zen based apu yet) on a fresh 14nm fabrication process , possibly with gdd5x vram would be as cutting edge as a new console can be for the next 3-4 years.