As a child, my first games console was a NES. I loved the console, but it was very quickly superceded by the SNES. The graphics were better, the games bigger, it could do more. I remember being utterly amazed by Starwing and it's "3D" graphics, or the beauty of the sprites in "A Link To The Past". I remember how smooth the animation in "Super Mario World" was, and how blisteringly fast "F-Zero" felt.
In time the SNES too was replaced when the PlayStation arrived. 36 bit graphics meant that we no longer had to put 3D in inverted commas. It was genuine 3D (admitedly slightly more angular than we may have liked) and games ran on discs! Suddenly, controllers had analogue sticks and rumble features.
Still, once again, it wasn't long until the Nintendo 64 arrived, then the Playstation 2, the XBox, the GameCube...
Then came the giants. PlayStation 3 and XBox 360. It's hard to believe that these two giants launched back in 2005, literally ten years ago. What's even harder to believe is that they are still going. Seriously, every other generation of console lasted approximately four years before the next big thing arrived and took over, and these two have more than doubled - nearly tripled - that lifespan. The PlayStation 4 and XBox One both have been out for two years now, yet their predecessors are not only still selling, but companies are still producing new games for them.
This is previously unheard of. At no time in gaming history have we had such a long overlap period between the current generation and previous generation of consoles (yes, I am saying 'current gen' and 'previous gen' rather than 'next gen' - they've been out two years, they're no longer next, they are very much now. In fact, the technology in them is actually quite dated). Normally, a year after the next gen launches, the previous console and it's games are bargain bucket materials, stocked only in 'retro stores' or specialist electronics.
Yet here we are, with Call of Duty Black Ops III being announced for PlayStation 3 and XBox 360. The catalogue of current generation games curently looks very similar to the previous generation. If it's not being made for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 at the same time as the XBox One and PlayStation 4 versions, then it's being rereleased for the PlayStation 4 and XBox One.
A petition for Call of Duty Modern Warfare II to be remade for the current generation hit 90,000 signatures.
This is not the 'Next Gen' I signed up for.
Sure, occassionally we're being tossed generation exclusives, and some of them are even quite good. That said, they are extremely few and far between, and why? It's simple: entirely too much development money is being spent either rehashing games from the previous gen (seriously, if you don't already have it, buy a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 for dirt cheap and get the damn game) or on watering down this generations games for those too cheap to upgrade to the latest tech.
You've had those consoles for ten years now. It's time to let go so that the developers can actually make something NEW.