wapplew
Member
Incremental upgrades seem to be the trend going forward, not just for MS, but Nintendo's NX likely will be too going by things Iwata has said. PS4 or 5 might even adopt this as well. Developers are feeling like there's too much risk these days with next generation consoles and have been making a lot of cross-gen titles. Konami even outlined that in one of their business slides that resetting the userbase to 0 every gen is killing companies and pushing companies to mobile and other forms of revenue.
Well, everyone on x86 architecture now, this is not the question of if, is when and how.
Every 2 years, 4 years, 6 years? BC and FC, BC only? It's very different.
There are several method discuss here.
Stop gap type 1: similar to typical gen, release a upgraded machine between gen. Xbox 1>Xbox 1.5 in 2-3 years> Xbox 2 in another 2-3 years. FC cut off after Xbox 2.
Stop gap type 2: similar to type 1 but FC cut off differently, dev need to support 2 machine at any time. Xbox 1>Xbox 1.5 in 2-3 years> Xbox 2 in another 2-3 years, Xbox 1 FC cut off, Xbox 2.5 in another 2-3 years, Xbox 1.5 FC cut off.
Ipad style: new machine every 1-2 years, full FC and BC.
Typical gen: release new machine every 6-7 years, full BC no FC, dev do typical port if they want bigger install base.
Feel free to add your method or correct if I'm wrong.