No More New Consoles?

In the end card it says "NX launch titles leaked?" but shows the quantum computing episode.

Valve pls fix

Ugh. Consoles trying to emulate PCs is the worst idea ever because of PC's unique issue with random hardware specific bugs due to a lack of standardization. This is overcome by the hardcore PC gamers who are willing to throw down the money to upgrade their rig every time a new better piece of hardware comes out or are willing to invest the time to mess with a ton of settings to make things work ,but it is not at all the console culture where if i get a game on a console I expect it to work because this is the one machine they tested it on to make it work before it was released. I don't want to put in a game and it to tell me "Sorry you can't play this game because you don't have the deluxe package". In summary consoles strength is that they are standardized so I know it will always be able to play a game because it was made for that hardware where on PC a game might not run because it support a card or driver.

When the Wii U was announced, to me it sounded like it was just an upgraded Wii. I didn't even realize at first that it was a new console. This is what stopped me from buying the Wii U. I wouldn't buy a PS4.5 or Xbox one.5. I can't afford to upgrade every few years for my console...I already have to do that for my PC...poor people problems

As some one who has yet to buy next gen console, owns a refurbished phone and has a four + year old laptop the idea that consoles might need to be replaced every year like an iPhone makes gaming feel more and more like an expensive hobby that only a few can really enjoy. I've had to miss out on games I want to play like the newest Tomb Raider, Until Dawn and even RWBY because replacing my current hardware just isn't in the budget. As we've seen more and more AAA titles try to be all things to all people, potentially cutting out a hug part of that market seem counter intuitive. Look at VR which has cut a big potential market simply due to cost. I think that if gaming wants to be more them just a hobby for the rich their really going to have to try and find a middle ground.

I will only accept this idea if games will still work with the base consoles. Otherwise I may have to give up gaming all together, since I refuse to upgrade a console every year. This was what turned me off with pc gaming.

Isn't the point of a console to give consumers a machine that will run all video games without any fussing or upgrading for a number of years? If they go to iterative equipment like PCs, then I would rather take the money that I pay for a console and put that towards a better PC. If the console isn't giving me the guarantee that I can play all my games on it for a good number of years, then all it is is a PC with limited features - at least in my mind.

It seems as though new cell phones are making these huge figures and everyone is buying them, however I'd like to point out that after the initial launch (people waiting in line and paying full retail on the day of release), service providers start offering it for a lot cheaper than retail. Now it's true that most of them do contracts and require certain conditions, but I'd say probably half or more of all $600-800 phones are sold for well under retail because of this deal. If Playstation Plus and Xbox Live Gold started doing the same thing, I could see new hardware iterations working in a way, but they wouldn't be as often as yearly since the biggest changes would take time to implement. If gamers are willing to buy a machine one year, having to buy the next year's model just to stay current would be a bit much since they'd be shelling out money they could be using on several games. Now, I'm not saying to hike up the price of Plus or Gold for all of the people that are currently using it (which is basically everyone at this point), but that's not a bad idea since it would alleviate a lot of the burden that comes with manufacturing costs. I think an opt in program where you pay more monthly/yearly could make it feasible, and in return you'd get the new model every 2 years at a cheaper price. Maybe trade in the old system so it can be salvaged for a later sale and you get the new one for free. The other big problem with a bunch of new console is the space it would take up if you bought the latest and greatest version and never sold any of the ones you had before it. And another general problem would be the used console market. It was already a little difficult to find the newest model in the last generation, even though it was essentially the same, because people always wanted the newest one. And since everyone who had the latest version was selling off their old system, it made it doubly hard to find what you were looking for because you'd search for the 360/PS3 slim and you'd get a ton of hits with people saying "I just got the 360/PS3 slim, I don't need this old one anymore" or whatever. The best concept, to me, would be the rumors around the Xbox modular system. It eliminates the need for figuring out which is better and the parts would be cheaper (potentially) every year than a whole new console, and you wouldn't have to buy the whole new system just for a slight performance boost, especially when it's only one component that's different. All that said, I see this generation lasting probably to 2020 before we change completely. Or it changes by holiday 2017 and this generation becomes the base performance level, just like the Neo and the modular Xbox are trying to convey.

ps Sorry for the long winded post. It's pretty much just 2 points. I have a problem with keeping what I say short because the key to discussing stuff like this is actually discussing it, not trimming it down to 140 characters and being done with it. But people have short attention spans so sometimes you have to boil your point down to the lowest form so they understand it.

tldr- Cell phones get away with it because they're sold cheaper with contracts and compensating that price difference on the service side. And brand new consoles every year would make for a poor gaming economy.

This potential new model might actually see me investing money into a console. Until now it's always been that I couldn't afford a new console until the next one was being released.

This is a terrible idea.

There will always be a huge group of people that will be mad at whatever change they want to make.

They could go ahead with this idea of iterative systems. But then you have the PS4, PS4.5, PS4.6 and so on, plus the Xbox One, Xbox One 1.2, Xbox One 1.360 and so on, plus the Nintendo equivalent and PC. And they assume that they want all the games to run on all versions of the hardware so that even people who have less money can still enjoy the games without upgrading hardware. Developers will never want to make different versions of their games for 3+ consoles per manufacturer (up to a total of 10 or something if they want to release on everything). That also means testing the game for all the revisions to make sure that it's not breaking on any end of the spectrum. Which means paying a lot more testers and developers (probably without cutting in the marketing budget because who would do that). Games are already costing way too much to make and it's going to be even more.

Another "solution" would be to move the PSN and Xbox Live ecosystems to PC. This way, everyone is PC gaming and the games can run by default with UWP (which is unrealistic as hell). Not everyone wants to move to PC gaming because it can be a hassle and console gaming is way simpler to get to a game you just bought rather than having to fight drivers and upgrading somewhat frequently.

Note that I put the word solution in quotes in the paragraph above. It's because there is no problem to fix. The big companies should know by now that even if they are losing some money on every console sale, they are still able to sell a console every time they release it. It has a lifetime that they can use to improve on the next version and release a version that is better than what they had. It's a good thing to refresh the market like that. But now, they are trying to make the industry come to a crawl by having "the last console". It's dumb to think that there will be no more innovation in hardware ever again and there won't be a next generation of GPU or CPU or a new thing that we can't even think of yet, that will render the current generation of hardware obsolete.

And one last thing: I don't want to buy something I already own again.