This is a challenge of a generation-less strategy. Without the technical break of a new console base and gamers being driven to buy new hardware to play new games, will the number of people who chose to not to upgrade cause more stagnation and slow technical progress? If PS5 and Xbox 4 are more powerful versions of PS4 and XBO and most of the user base chose not to upgrade, then devs are stymied and will have to remain targeting those 2013 hardware specifications which will hold games back.
I disagree. First off, the 2013 consoles would be a non-factor in this discussion. The only relevant consoles would be the 2016/2017 consoles. Remember only one previous console "generation" would require support. This retains the 6-8 year traditional console cycle game support requirements. In theory a developer could choose to support even older consoles but only the smallest of development studios (predominantly indie studios) will do this...just like what happens on PC.
A rolling generation strategy allows development to go either bottom up or top down. You either design around the base console and scale up or you design around the new console and scale down. Both strategies are viable.
Some companies (EA, Activision, UBIsoft, etc.), including the console holders would take a top down approach. Make the game for the top tier console and scale it down to the 3-4 year old console. That preserves EVERYTHING the current generation strategy has, except iterates much faster. Large AAA developers feed off of making their game look the best it can look, it's all part of the marketing. They are also the only ones that can afford to attempt to exploit a new generation as that is extremely costly, especially at the beginning of a generation when multiplatform engines are mature WRT to the newest generation of hardware.
Doing this also makes development much easier for smaller studios who don't have to risk going bankrupt every time a new generation comes out as the player base is reset. Smaller developers are much more reliant on large player bases where they can appeal to a niche crowd and still do relatively well. They would go with a bottom up approach and scale things up for the newest "generation" if they can afford to.
In other words,
- Going top down means everything is exactly the same as traditional console hard break generations. You target the latest console hardware and then scale down.
- Everything released on console in 2013 - 2016/2017 can run on hardware sold back in 2009-2010 which would have been the hypothetical base of a previous rolling generation console.
- AAA developers will all predominantly go this route. You can see signs of this with Starfield (Bethesda) and Cyberpunk (CDPR borderline AAA/High A) where both are targeting next generation console hardware capabilities.
- Basically this is what CDPR did with the Witcher 3, except the PS3/X360 architectures were so dissimilar that they wouldn't scale things down enough. Having only 1/16th the memory was going to preclude anything from being easily scaled back regardless of differences in hardware architectures. However, it scales down just fine to much older hardware than a 2009-2010 console would have used.
- Going bottom up means smaller developers are less at risk as they can continue to leverage the development pipeline and tools.
- Interestingly this is how all the cross gen titles at the PS4/XBO launch approached things. Target PS3/X360 and scale up for PS4/XBO. Again, only 1/16th the memory of current gen. consoles was likely a large factor.
Clean-break new generations, while seemingly consumer-hostile, actually promote a health constantly moving market. Generation-less also runs the risk of one manufacturer/platform ending up utterly and impossibly dominant where people build up huge libraries where starting over almost becomes unthinkable.
Except it doesn't. It's actively hostile to smaller development studios. Each hard generation break puts smaller studios at risk of going out of business as they can't easily leverage their existing engines and coding base. As well, as stated above, they now face a choice of staying on the older platform which will receive almost no marketing or the newer platform that doesn't have a large enough install base for them to comfortably draw niche users to their games.
That is the complete antithesis of a healthy constantly moving market. It's also why up until the advent of the current generation with it's similarities to PC architecture that many smaller previously console only developers were abandoning consoles in favor of PC development and/or embracing PC as a way to stay in business as they knew they didn't have to deal with a constantly resetting hardware platform.
Digital distribution was also key in allowing smaller development studios to survive, but that's only just starting to become the predominant distribution method on console. The wonderful Noclip Warframe documentaries talks about how hard it was for non-AAA studios during the PS3/X360 era.
Regards,
SB