Do U think it's better that Consoles might adopt smartphone strategy

If MS and Sony release a more powerful console soon, and more frequent, while maintaining software support forward and backwards, meaning the only difference would be resolution and frame rate. Would strike you as something bad or good ?

bring it on. these consoles were shit and outdated before they even launched.

It's not good, cause while we all have a phone, not everyone has a console.

Terrible. I'll probably quit console gaming if Sony follows this strategy. What's the point?

I'll just stick with PC gaming where I already update frequently for bigger gains.

It's probably not a bad thing. Consoles can't get much worse than they are right now, so I can only assume a constant upgrade path might result in the console companies hopping on board jumps in tech much sooner than they would otherwise which can allow third party devs to adopt it faster than they would otherwise as well.

I'm sure Sony knows the PS4's 2010 hardware won't make for the best VR experience, so the rumors about a PS4.5 are probably true. And who knows if MS is still working on the hololens for gaming, or if they have put it to other uses. Rather than waiting 5+ more years for the PS5 or the Xbox Two to come out to enjoy either experience, the incremental iterations may allow gamers to experience this tech sooner than later, and gain access to a wider variety of gaming experiences.

It'll be like the PC is now. It's easy to see PC just utterly crushes the consoles in terms of game experiences, and it goes hand-in-hand with being on the cutting edge of technology.

1. Who told you it would only be resolution and framerate?

2. Cell phones are on leasing/contract plans. I don't see that happening but a trade in credit would be cool.

What the ****? No.

You might as well just buy and maintain a gaming PC every year then.

The initial cost is high, but then you only need to replace 1 or 2 parts every year or so.

I'm all for it as long as every iteration gets at least 6 yrs of support.

Consoles are prebuilt and still more easy to use than a PC.

@emgesp: me too

I think what they dont understand is that you have to do more then just make it a little more powerful. But a console revision is good when done right. Sony has to be careful though, gamers know PS4 tech is very cheap now compared to 2013.

i'm all for it

Smartphone strategy how? Hardware iteration? Software compatibility?

This is like asking 8 year old me if I would like it if Christmas happened more often. I love hardware launches and advances in tech. Whatever makes that happen more often is fine by me.

Lolno. You don't "need" to replace 1 or 2 parts "every year or so". If you want Ultra settings and 60FPS at 1080p then it's more than enough to replace your graphics card twice a gen, say every 3 or 4 years and you're good to go. Maybe add some ram once a gen, but that's it. CPU, Mobo and PSU should be good for a whole gen if you haven't bought low-end crap to begin with.

No. That would kill the console market really fast.

Nope, because that would kill the market as people would be confused and there would be a mess with games as development on same games would surpass the release time of consoles.

Actually, I just heard today Sony is doing a Playsation brand of smart-phone development and releases in Japan. Just like Nintendo is doing on smart-phones via DeNA. Personally, I do worry. From a business standpoint this is proably the most bang for the buck as far as return on investment goes and reducing overhead. It can really go either way, either it'll help prop up their traditional gaming sector, or replace it. Hopefully they use it as a crutch and not an out for their current market.

As to more as to what TC asked. I don't think Sony is making a PS4.5 or whatever anymore, at least for anything beyond 4K video support and upscaling. Frankly I think they're just preparing for a possibly changing market. I was watching The Men Who Stare At Goats last night, and they talked about how they set up a psychic arm of the US Army because the Russians thought the US already had a psychic arm of the Army due to a cheesy tabloid so they started their own, so the US really did start their own despite how absurd it seemed because they couldn't afford to let the Russians take the lead in psychic research. Sometimes, I wonder if the reason everybody is flirting around with upgrading these consoles in the midst of its life cycle is because they think the other might, so they have tentative plans in case the other does it. As far as giving it the possibility for upgraded game performance, I think that decision might hinge entirely on knowing what Nintendo's plans are for the NX in terms of power. if Nintendo attemps to leapfrog them on power, Sony retaliates just the same. If they're making something on par with the PS4/XBO, they'll just upgrade it slightly as to not alienate it's current base, so I'm just guessing.

As for Microsoft working on a modular upgrade (probably through a USB 3.0 peripheral connection), I think it's solely to provide supplemental processing power for VR. After all, there's no real reason to upgrade just for the console, developers are doing an excellent job narrowing the parity gap on their own, at this point they'd be pandering to Digital Foundry pixel counter who spend their time analyzing zoomed in still frames. The fallout of needlessly releasing such supplemental power would probably be negative, and for no gain. Rather, I think such supplemental power could be used for VR, and maybe MS will allow an array of third party VR headsets to work with their console through the peripheral supplemental device.

Not really... if they start releasing "new" consoles every 1 or 2 years like mobiles, that's way too often. And won't work.

But I don't think that will happen. More like every 3-4 years, with a major refresh (change of gen) every 8 or so.

Exactly this. If it was something where you can trade it in or lease it or maybe a plan (not for this idea though), then it's not bad. Otherwise that would be horrible.....

Hell no!