Why does everyone think this gen will be longer?

[KBG29]

This generation of machines are much more future proof than any other consoles before them. I know that people hate that term, but it is true. In every generation before this, the box you brought home day one was the same exact box you have today. Now with all three of these new consoles there is almost no limit to what they can achive through time and OS updates.

Another reason is the extream shock that the switch to this generation has caused for 3rd party developers. Should new consoles come out in the next 2 years, EA, THQ, Activision, and more would all be in dire straights financialy. Moving forward to fast this gen could result in a crash to the market.

One big reason is the new mainstream appeal of gaming. The people buying the Wii today are not the kind of people that want to update all the time. These are the people that complain about needing a new TV every year, and how they don't want a new movie format every 10 years. Convencing them to go and buy a new Wii in a year or two is not very likely.

Last reason is development costs, and time. This generations machines are so much more powerful with parrallel proccessing, and abilities to perform new graphical techniques that engines took much loneger to build. Thanks to all that extra power the amount of time needed to take care of graphics and have a game that does not look unbalanced is much greater. This reason ties directly back into the thrid party devs money issues. Devs need time to take full advantage of these systems, and work out the complications of multi core coding before we move forward.