This just screams of both Sony and Microsoft getting caught with their proverbial pants down.

Yes, the 360/PS3 generation lasted far longer than either side thought viable, so much so that some publishers actually thought that people were done with Console gaming altogether, and started this episodic shit, while still giving sub-par PC releases for everything.

Riding on their success from the prior generation, X1 and PS4 just both scream of doing the most cynical, cheapo upgrade path possible to turn a profit just like how Nintendo did the cynical snobbery from the Gamecube all the way up to the WiiU. The difference is... 4K is a thing, the tech for that is becoming cheaper, and literally no current generation console is able to even support any kind of output to 4K pixels. Hell, none of them can even do 1080p60fps gaming as it is. The 360/PS3 looked more forward thinking because they were built with a mind of HD just as HD was becoming a thing that more than the 1%ers could actually afford. Now with 4K, the demands needed from the hardware to drive that much pixelage is about as demanding as the shift from SD to HD was. And neither the PS4 nor the X1 can even hope to handle 4K, nor VR. I'm still not crazy for VR, but 4K is a tech I can easily appreciate and could understand wanting to build for.

Nintendo tended to successfully get away with mid-generational console upgrades a lot, especially on the handheld side, but that's because they made a point of trying to keep it as inexpensive as possible, and/or create a killer app/game that took advantage of the new possibilities right away. They had the Disk System in Japan, the Satellaview for the Super Nintendo, DK64 for the n64 RAM expansion (and later, Perfect Dark), and all the mid-refresh versions of the Game Boy. The difference compared to them versus their competitors, is that their original hardware designs typically left it open for stuff like this. What Sony and Microsoft want people to do, is effectively throw away our standard X1/PS4 systems and buy another. And the sad thing is, I fully expect them to simply ban online access unless you do buy one of their newer systems. At least Sony is petty enough to do that from my experience in dealing with their staff and so-called "support".

Sad thing is, even now, with this current generation (WiiU, X1, PS4), the only system of the three that I would buy first if I had to choose is the WiiU, which I might have to do anyway when Nintendo will call for a purge of old stock to make room for the NX. Still, neither system has enough unique games to warrant spending full price on a new system. And the WiiU I'd want more for homebrew than anything. I'll tell you right now, it would barely even be ran unless I could hack it.

 

@KSP Some sony executive just talked about awful experience for psvr on ps4 and say ps4k is a must.

Nvidia have a tech (which is just trimming) that let you render at 4k and output at 1080p for better visual. Though 1080p max setting might be a better option unless you have the monster 1080 at 11 teraflop with air cooling. Further to it is implied by both nvidia and amd that vr takes as much horsepower as 4k.

 

Am I the only one here that thought of the fighting metaphor with this name?

Give them the old one-two.

 

The price drops hundreds of dollars every year (thanks to rich people buying them), in a few more years, certain models will be as affordable as HDTV's.

 

Having more variants of console is just gonna confuse consumers on which to buy. The lines of PC and Console have been blurring lately, as Sony and Microsoft want to make more variants, and now that Consoles have gotten mods as well, their starting to be very similar, which could be a good or bad thing.