Are there any benefits to shorter lifespans for consoles?

[SvennoJ]

fatslob-:O said:

SvennoJ said:
Shorter life cycles are good.
- Excitement of new hardware with new possibilities. (Half True)
- Room for innovation and new IPs. (True ?)
- Level playing field for developers. (False)

Longer life cycles leads to
- Stagnation and sequelitis. (False ?)
- Established game engines that push the machines to the max leaving little room for experimental game play. (False)
- Harder for small teams to break into the market. (False)

 

By level playing field I mean, any developer that wants to start out with the new hardware doesn't have to face a huge catalog to fit into. Early games receive the benefit of there not being that many games available yet, while the most hungry consumers are the ones that buy the console first.

Sequels happen and stagnate over the years as a console gen goes on. Publishers focus on pushing the graphics for each sequel leaving less room for extensive physics, smart AI or many characters at the same time on screen. Small teams have a much harder time producing anything that looks close to the graphic fidelity AAA games have gotten to. At the start of a gen everything is still fresh and people don't mind the gap so much, nor shorter games.

Unfortunately this gen the hardware isn't that big of an upgrade and we're already at the stage of graphics pushing innovation away :/ At least there's still a bit more (dumb) characters / cars on screen.