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Comment by drzaiusapelord | Hacker News Reader

>I want to see 4K games 5 yrs later

Me too, but I'd rather have the console generation lifetime be shorted. Why not a new Xbox after 3 years? The 360 was released almost 9 years ago. How is this the norm?

I'd love to see us PC gamers given some level of competition here. I can't tolerate 360 graphics unless they're super cartoony. It just looks like a PC game from 2004 or so.

Incremental updates work for things like phones and tablets. I mean, people line up by the Apple store near me for a couple blocks (downtown Chicago) for a slight bump in hardware specs. Not sure why we can't have a faster update schedule with consoles.

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Nintendo seems to be doing this with their handheld line. But the issue is Nintendo always makes money off its consoles.

Microsoft and Sony typically lose money per console for a good portion of the sales cycle. So either cost has to be driven down dramatically, or you have to expect people to pay significantly more per console and then expect them to update more frequently.

I think in the future we'll see it where you'll be able to upgrade a console, like a gen .5 where you just connect a pack into an expansion bay and it boosts CPU/RAM/GPU to allow the game to run with better graphics

In my opinion the major reasons for longer console cycles are development cycle time frames and hardware compatibility issues.

Graphics improved over the life of the last console generation until they plateaued. To do that many game developers and game engines have to get down and write code at the hardware level to optimize as much as they can. Add on the 1-5 year development time frame of many games and you're in a scenario where updating hardware regularly actually becomes a big middle finger to many of your game developers.

Things that could change this: - Newer Super Powerful hardware allows consoles can stay in the sub $500 price range and is strong enough to allow hardware level optimization to be done away with so that a 3-5 year game can work on multiple console versions (past or future). - Revolutionary game development software that some how magically lets super AAA titles be made in months instead of years while also drastically dropping the price of a new release from $60 into the phone "app" range. - Instead of hardware becoming substantially more powerful it becomes substantially cheaper and smaller. If you could buy next gen consoles for under $200 it would be a hassle, but possible to own multiple generations so that you can play your 3 year old games as well as your new ones.

TLDR: Hardware is not the reason for long console release cycles, the games are.

To be fair, we did get lots of incremental upgrades to the 360, they just didn't change the name. The 360 selling now is much different than the one I bought 9 years ago.

You got power and noise/fan savings and hardware fixes. In almost 9 years you went through 3-4 generations of video card technology, yet the 360 I buy today has similar performance of the one that shipped in 2005.

My PC from 2005 would be a joke to game on.

I think a lot of this shows the lack of competition in this area and plain greed. Why redesign when we can milk the current design? Our only real competitor feels the same and those critical of this will just buy PC games. Seems like console gamers are being abused a bit by these policies and the gaming world is always many years behind on consoles.

I don't think it shows a lack of competition and greed. As far as I can tell, it illustrates a fundamental attribute of consoles: They are a fixed target. Game developers can hyper-optimize for the specific hardware in a console because 100% of the people using that console will be using that hardware configuration.

With PCs, there's the question of how well your computer will play a game. With consoles, this question is instead binary: Either your Xbox 360 will play the game exactly as well as all the others or it will not play the game.

>Either your Xbox 360 will play the game exactly as well as all the others or it will not play the game.

That's not the case, or at least it shouldn't. PC's aren't magic. You can ship a game with low res textures and high. So if you have the Xbox1 2013 you get the low, but if you have the Xbox1 2015 you get the high and maybe a bump in resolution.

This is a solved problem in the PC world. I understand its different than the status quo, but its silly to think it can't be done.

I suspect the console makers are simply scared to make the early adopters have a worse experience than the kid with the new box and it serves them to make the generation last as long as possible from an economic pov.

Regardless, I hope someone disrupts this duopoly. I had higher hopes for android gaming devices, but who knows, its still early in the game. I could see a deviation on the steambox really shake things up.

I also imagine the economics get better as time goes on and you don't make a profit until sale # x million. Considering how much cheaper hardware is nowadays, I wonder if this formula still applies. You can make a gaming box that beats these next gen consoles for not that much.

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