It is the individual developers that has to make all the work to keep up with all the new iOS releases, Apple does not care.

Many of the newest features only apply to the newer iPads.

The constant new iPhone models is as much a technology issue as a marketing issue. Apples marketing department will push for annual/biannual new models . Apples technology department will want better and cheaper hardware for many years to come.

Take all this and apply to gaming and you will have hardware with the same OS but not the same performance. Should developers go for the audience in the middle segment making their game not stand out in the competition - or should they go for the best hardware leaving hardware with lesser spec with a inferior game?

i think not being able to play my ps3 games on ps4 kind of sucks.  each gen BC is a questionable thing.  even with nintendo it is a BC that only extends back 1 generation and to accomplish that they have been showing last gen hardware into next gen hardware which means you are paying for it.

for developers a massive change in specs is a hard thing to adjust too.  rewrite all your engines.  rewrite all your assets.  then you are left with an awful choice,.. you could do all the rewrites targeting "expected" specs so that you can be done in time to release something in the consoles first year on market but then you might "expect" wrong and have to rewrite a lot of stuff.  or you can just wait but then you can't get a game out in the first 3 years because that's how long games take to develop now.

iterative hardware is much easier to plan and develop for.  you always target the existing hardware because it will take 3 years on market before they will be allowed to not target it.  the higher spec model is "unknown" but you can't use the power for the base game anyways just resolution and framerate.  far easier to work in this environment.

for gamers is means all their games are backwards compatible on new machines.  my version of uncharted 4 will work on ps4, ps4.5, ps5, ps5.5, ps6, ps6.5.  i like that.  it also means forward compatibility.  when the ps5 is out i'll probably still be able to play 90% of it's library on ps4 making the urgenty to upgrade much less.  my ps4 won't be supported forever but it will be better supported than the transitions between generations before.

this is also good for developers.  the reset on userbase is hard on games.  do you target the small but growing next gen userbase or the large but shinking last gen userbase?  now they don't have to chose.  you target both.  both consumers have access to the game (a think i think that is good for gamers).  and therefore both consumers have the ability to buy the game (a think i think is good for developers).

what i dont' understand is why anyone is soo upset that traditional generations is going away.  the new model has no downsides in my opinion.  you'll still be able to buy a console and play it for 6-9 years before you need to upgrade.  you'll still be able to just put a disc into a console and play it.

i dunno what else to say other than i'm excited for this.

I just hope they don't overcrowd the market and decrease consumer-trust, because we all know what happened last time when the market got overcrowded with a lot of consoles :S

We already have that scenario happening in the mobile space.

Android phones run different versions of Android and vastly different hardware. Games simply run better on the more capable hardware, the low end of the market is rarely left out though. SONY and MS made it clear that developers are free to use the extra power but they won't force them to.

All the work for optimiziation for different OS and hardware will be on the developers, making it even more expensive to satisfy all and every hardware/OS combination. In the relative low tech mobile games this may still make economic sense.

I will try to find an interview with a indie developer where he explains the problems and workload that is demanded by a mobile developer.

EDIT! Sorry, I have no time to find the article right now!

"We've lost three times in a row, so we're going to change the rules."

Pretty sure generations are here to stay for now.

This

Good get rid of the generations, that's what's going to happen at both Xbox and PlayStation, and it's a good thing.

That's pretty much what Xbox has always been, but now it's become less hidden.

I always assumed the Xbox One and PS5 would be backwards compatible with the previous gens.  But seeing how Windows 10, is going to be stable for the next x number of years, it makes since.

They want people to keep everything on Window and DirectX, that way you can skip the gens, when you get a new console and only have one or two games to play, and just increase your hardware power and enjoy new games, or your old games the same or better.

It’s going to be a while before a new major changes in Windows and some major hardware innovations before I think we see DirectX 13.  Or they may just keep innovating DX12.  We shall see.

IE they and Sony want to con gamers into spending $400 a pop every two years or so instead of every five or six.

If Nintendo jumps on that bandwagon too, I might just be done buying game consoles. Might just have to get a Steambox eventually for indie games, who knows.