What is so bad about keeping all your games and peripherals, just to upgrade the box

Nothing bad about that, that's what I did with the wiiU :p
Plays all my wii games in 1080p over hdmi with all the same peripherals!

I'm likely to buy a new box if it can playback 4K UHD discs. It would be nice if MS makes an XBox One slim that does that or maybe the NX (when pigs fly, wiiU won't even play DVD) as I already have a ps4.

Yet seperate hardware specs for games is a concern. Is it going to be optimized for both, a compromise between the two, one neglected. Are we now going to get face offs with frame rate drops on ps4, frame pacing issues of ps4.5, pick your poison. This gen already has the attitude that since all games are installed on HDD, efficient loading strategies are not a concern anymore. 2 minute load times for Just cause 3! (Oh wait it's 15 minutes already) Just attach or install a ssd drive right. So what's next, game runs a bit crappy, just wait until the next box, we targeted it for that one, it's future proof!
I switched to mainly gaming on console to get away from the whole "play it now or wait until I upgrade my GPU" next to fiddling with settings.  I know I will wait, as I did with GTA5 (was never going to ps4 right) and Tombraider.

Anyway I don't expect devs to put much effort into a bit faster running ps4.5 It's not as simple as turning up a few sliders or increasing resolution a bit. You might say, but PC games scale with the hardware. Yes they do, but they need quite a bit of overhead to accomplish that and remain stable. End experience is up to the user and you're likely going to get variable results.
For example Elite Dangerous Horizons on my laptop runs at up to 30fps, goes all the way below 10 fps with a few other people on screen on planets, and drops to 0.8 fps trying to plan a route near the center of the galaxy. And it never uses more than 18% of my cpu or my 16gb of ram to cache simple things so it doesn't take 30 seconds to load the same system map again.

Fixed hardware spec of consoles is all about making efficient use of all available resources and optimize each part of a game to stick to a baseline performance. Add more specs, less time to accomplish that. Expect even more lazy devs accusations!

PS1 to PS2 was 5 years

Its selling well? to what? PS4 install base isnt as huge in comparison to PC and android devices. Its better to adapt now and to compete with these markets than being taken over by them

5 years and 4 months for Japan. 5 and 6 months for NA.

That isn't justification for your false claim that console cycles are usually 4 years. Because the quickest transition for Sony is still 16-18 months longer than that.

Its the same people who bitched about the New3DS

If Sony really want to keep up with tech then they should do what MS are doing and just put PSN on PC and let the gamers choose what hardware they want. PS4.5 sounds more like a money grab and taking advantage of the brand hype then anything else.

It sounds like MS and Sony will both be offering upgraded consoles in the near future. No biggie as far as I'm concerned. I'll stick with the stance of does it offer anything that makes me need it? If yes, is the current cost worth it? Once that also becomes yes I'll buy.

Nintendo did it with the DSi and more recently the N3DS, incidentally the first major console I've not bought in the past decade because a port of a Wii game is just not a worthy justification for a £200 handheld.

If Sony had a vested interest in a PC OS that would make perfect sense. I don't doubt it's the way things are going. At the moment they probably still have more money to be made from dedicated hardware though.

Yes, it's selling well in it's market and doesn't need to try to compete against PC or smartphones directly. PC hasn't done shit to consoles yet and smart phones could never play serious games with it being affordable. The PS4 will sell over 100 million. Sony is already playing around with all of these different features that could expand it's user to unprecented levels but we'll have to wait and see how that plays out but changing how the console gens work by dicking around with upgraded versions of a console is likely a recipe for disaster. 

I said almost