yes, that's what will probably happen, but as I have been told by plenty of Nintendo fans, Nintendo doesn't compete with Sony and MS. They make toys, not game consoles, so it's fine. 

Does it not seem like consoles are rather dangerously blurring the lines between consoles and PC with these upgrades? Mainly, the primary draw of the console is that once you purchase the singular object you get to play games indefinitely. These guys seem to be adopting a hardware/mobile approach with frequent upgrades which, in my mind, takes away from the pro's column of console ownership.

Perhaps it's just a one time deal as this gen's consoles were historically weak and inexpensive. I'm frustrated as I can't find the source I used to reference (just spent 20 minutes scouring google), but I recall that, if one removes the additional expense of the Kinect for the Xbox1 and the Gamepad for the Wii U, each of the three consoles were the cheapest to produce (adjusted for inflation) of any console they've made to this date. In truth, I cannot recall if the Wii U was cheaper than the Wii or second to it, but the general narrative is that we received weak hardware this time around that was dated the moment it hit the shelves.

This seems like it might be a trend, though. I suppose there's a history of it (CD peripherals/sega 32x/many DS and 3DS upgraded models), but this seems somewhat unique.

Are you comparing the Nx to a childs toy or am I misunderstanding you?

sure, the NX, Wii U, Wii, etc and so on.

Nintendo sells videogames for the toys they produce. no insult meant by it of course

I just hope they show the more powerful Xbox at this E3 too so I can make a quick decision whether to go for the Slim or wait on the 1.5.

Want a Crackdown 3 Elite bundle!

Four years to release an upgraded machine feels about right to me. I like the strategy of continued support on old specs as well, I assume MS will do that.

I would say nothing if everything goes swimmingly. It can be frustrating to consumers to buy a product only to have it be dated moments later (as someone who bought his 3DS XL literally 3 weeks before they announced the "New" version I can attest to that), though, and if my experience on the PC is any indictation developers will inevitably design their games with the superior hardware in mind. This often results in poor performance and a bad experience on the lesser hardware.

I know they're promising that won't happen, but I'll certainly need to see proof of this as that happens all the time on the PC, which is why those of us on the PC feel obligated to keep pace with the hardware in a way we never had to stress with consoles.

Great question and this goes back to what the point of a console is.  It provides one common set of hardware than can be developed against. 

Now we all know that PC can be more powerful due to faster and heavier iterations on GPU tech, but one thing that they lack is the uniformity of console development.  Too many time we see where games work as intended on some hardware but not others even if it the hardware is up to spec.  I don't think we want that to be what consoles become.  So, instead of PC think more on the line of iPhones where new devices are released but the hardware is still uniform across that hardware simple for the purpose of ensuring that games run on all 'Xboxes or PlayStation 4s'. 

In other words I think that even if they iterate, it will never become as open as PC.    My idea for the upgradable Xbox would basically alllow you to get a base Xbox, but it would be upgradeable and modular so you can pop out the Xbox 100 CPU for a new Xbox 200 CPU down the line.  This would allow Microsoft the ability to make all Xboxes upgradable while vetting hardware agains their software... while also becoming a reliable sourse of revenu.  So instead of redesinging a whole new Xbox in Two Years, they can focus on cheaper individual parts to upgrade the existing model. 

You would think that but mind you they released the Wii U for $350 a year before the PS4. So the fact that there is better hardware out there doesn't mean Nintendo will use it and make a console which is technically equal or better than the PS4 for $300. As for this topic I guess E3 is around the corner and this is one of many rumours to come in the coming two weeks

Soothsayer Spem, back at it again with another correct prediction.

Now we wait for Sony with PS Now and Nintendo with the smartconsole.