It's the performance vs programmability tradeoff. The article references it. As one goes back in console history, the performance to achieve contemporarily vi

It's the performance vs programmability tradeoff. The article references it. As one goes back in console history, the performance to achieve contemporarily visually-stunning results required exotic architectures + hand-tuned code. Over time, state of the art PC + GPU hardware improved, to the point there wasn't a functional difference vs exotic architectures. Additionally, the cost of developing leading-edge custom architectures exploded. Microsoft really pushed this with the original "PC in a box" XBox, but you saw the console OEMs outsource increasing parts of their chip solutions after that. Why keep / buy entire chip design teams, when AMD will do it for you? Especially if the performance difference is negligible.