Quote Originally Posted by crash5s View Post
A note on consoles, when they released most people did not have an HDTV, let alone a 1080p HDTV. The vast majority of gamers were running their 360's and PS3's off ye old CRT TVS, and for the few with HDTVs the majority were 1080i or 720p, so the consoles just did everything in 720p. There was no point in pushing anything above 720p because almost nobody had a TV to actually use it. It would have been pants on head jaw droppingly stupid to release content and spend time on things people couldn't use.

Lastly, I'll take gaming at 720p on console over gaming on a PC just about any day of the week. If I want graphics and whizbang, I'll watch a damn blue ray.
if youre going to build a console with a 5 + life in it you cant build it just to meet the norm of the time. i personally think these long life cycles are really killing gaming technology innovation. consoles were originally gaming consoles but nowthey have also become entertainment centers. while it certainly is very nice to be able to stream things to the console to watch it on the tv I think that both sony and microsoft are neglecting the gaming aspect of their consoles more and more. i know you cant put the latest and greatest tech in a console due to multiple reasons but you sure can upgrade those console a little bit more often. the xbox was released in 2005 and we probably wont have the next generation one til the end of 2013. thats an 8 year shelf life which to be frank is just too long. personally, a 5 year shelf life would be perfect. i know that some people dont need or want the latest and greatest in their xbox and that is why both microsfot and sony should do 2 things: 1) make old games backward compatible with the new console. i use a pc primarily and i have no problem playing a game from quite a few years ago on my modern pc. i know there is programming difficulties in doing so but like i said in the beginning, if youre going to have a 5 + year console life you cant neglect important things like that. people can build up such a huge gaming library in that time and to tell them that the next console wont support most if any of their games which they love and spent a good deal of money on is pretty crappy on microsoft's and sony's part. 2) have multi tier console models. some people might not need or want a lot of what a new console offers except for a features. make a few different models which could cater to everyone and not just a single model. i dont consider just changing the hard drive size as having a different model. 4K television while just announced is most likely going to be the next big thing when it comes to entertainment. while i dont expect the next gen console to support 4k gaming it would be nice to get a console that does support it a little before 2020, but with the way things are going now i dont see that happening