A few articles that popped up on my news feed are kind of upset over the idea that the new business model for consoles from here on out may be to shell out an upgraded refresh every two years or so. That now they are copying the cellphone model and feeding on the drive that people must have the latest and greatest shiny thing, lest they look like an ancient old fart living under a rock. I don't really mind it so much, as long as they continue to not kill support for the older consoles until the average lifespan of a console generation. If Apple can make the iPhone 4S still relevant, albeit with growing pains, then I'm sure Sony and Microsoft can keep the PS4 and XB1 relevant for another three years.

But here's something else that tickles me about why hating this new model seems kind of silly. It's the one feature that is so desired, a game changer if you will, and is giving the XB1 a rather good edge over the PS4: backwards compatibility. This new model makes backwards compatibility mostly a moot point. As long as the standards don't deviate terribly in the coming years, a PlayStation or Xbox under this model 5 years from now should still be able to play launch titles. Hell, if you are using a 32-bit version of Windows, you can still run Windows 2.0 apps that came with the OS.

I suppose people's fears are that when you have this sort of model, the value of the previous models drops so significantly that you're stuck in a rut. Nobody's going to want a PS4 or XB1 when the Neo and Scorpio come out is the idea and so you'll get a pittance if you want to resale it. Well, for the most part, didn't this happen to consoles whose games were backwards compatible on the next generation? I'm sure nobody wanted to buy a PS1 when the PS2 could play its games. The GameCube to the Wii (though that depends if you really used the GameCube's addons), and now I'm sure fewer people are hunting for Xbox 360's now that the Xbox One has a respectable backwards compatible library.

But anyway, this is a good model to follow, as long as you don't force upgrades on people too soon.