Video consoles for more than 4 decades have become an entertainment system over the years, evolving in a surprising way in both hardware and how to use them, this is because these are always in parallel with the progress technology, is a mandatory task because if they do not do so, they will be totally obsolete, losing the interest of consumers, however, since some years ago gamers, especially the most experienced, are seeing accelerated paths in the consoles, taking many models in a short term.
Before the life cycle of a console was from 5 to 7 years, the developers launched to the market what would be "the most innovative technology" to surprise the consumers, we can take as a reference when the Sega CD or the first PlayStation, when using CD-ROM it allowed to expand in a surprising way the programming capabilities in them, these consoles had several versions, but really it was the same console only that reduced.
This trend of reforming a console to make it smaller has been around for a long time, for example the NES became an NES Top Loader, or the Snes becoming a Snes Jr, if we go to more recent times we have the Xbox 360 or the Ps3, each one has more than 3 different versions, all offer the same performance in all aspects, however this is a necessary evil for the companies, the technology advances in leaps and bounds so they need to show the consumer changes in your videoconsole with small updates to make it attractive again.
Currently the situation of the consoles is a bit worrisome, since the departure of the Xbox One, Wii U and PlayStation 4 it can be clearly seen that the consoles are approaching a PC, this is not bad at all, but people who have knowledge in hardware know very well that this evolves every year, new processors, memories, motherboards, among other components are always being updated, so in a pc you can somehow modify it in parts, but in a video console this is impossible.
This leads companies to make short-term updates, because their consoles are quickly falling behind in technology, the Xbox One S or Playstation 4 PRO are clear examples of this, those who bought their first version and the see that in less than 3 years there is another with hardware updates are a bit disappointed, forcing them to sell at a cheaper price to buy the newest.
We can deduce that the developers will have two paths to choose from, the first one that every 1 to 2 years take the same console model, but with updates to improve its performance and offer a better user experience, this would overwhelm the market, even though the companies will have "gains" the users would feel a little dented thinking that their console will soon not support some innovations, the second way is that the developers allow the hardware change in their team, although it seems a crazy idea the companies like Microsoft, SONY or Nintendo can manufacture hardware licensed by them to update their future consoles, allowing the user to have a constant update of a single acquisition, but we would be approaching what would be the PC world.
The truth of all this is that every day companies are rushing too many new consoles to the market, because of the great technological pressure that exists in recent years, although many do not see the mini computers are moving more and more to the consoles , because its hardware can be modified and also its functionality extends to more than 5 years, we still do not know exactly what course it will take all this, but one thing if it is safe, we will have a multitude of consoles in the market increasingly smaller doing the same function.
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