I still believe that in the console world, that technology upgrades are exponential.
So the current crop of systems are harder to replace three years from now. The next crop of systems after PS2/XBOX/GC will be even harder to replace.
You ever wonder why intel suddenly decided to slow down their obsolecense speed? Their rate of advancement had become vastly superior to the rate of software advancement. So if they had 4GHZ chips on the market now, 1.4GHZ chips would be very cheap. 1.4GHZ would be all you need for good speed.
So if the rate of software advancement is different then the rate of hardware advancement, the game developers won't be ready to push the limits of the next generation systems as much. Becuase of this, they simpy will delay the next generation systems.
At least with the console upgrade cycle, it's good for the consumer. The SNES started in 1991 right? They still made games up until 1997, possible even 1998. PS1 was available in 1995 IIRC. The NES started in 1984 I think. They didn't stop making games until at least 1994.
Compare your NES to your SNES, compare your SNES to your Gamecube. Ok now look at the MS and PC upgrade cycle. Suddenly this console upgrade cycle ain't so unfair.
They push the limits on consoles. On PCs they use the upgradability of the PC, and the consumer upgrade rate, in order to let better hardware pick up the slack of Lazy coding. Think your game's system requirements(including wind0ze system requirements) are only because of better features? Think again.
I mean shoulden't Windows XP have only moderately higher system requirements then Windows95? W95 can run quite slow on a 486, XP should be able to run quite slow a P90. By quite slow I mean slow, but not so slow that it's pointless to even bother with it. I remember putting W95 on my 486/50 many years ago. It was quite a bit slower then Windows 3.1, but hardly unusable.
