Game consoles are now smartphones, and that's okay

Sony recently revealed the PlayStation 5 Pro game console, complete with advanced ray beams, AI something or other, 1.21 gigawatts, and a bunch of other stuff. There's something here that's more interesting than the hardware, or how much it costs, or if the console should even exist: consoles are now smartphones, and we need to treat them as such.

Historically, game consoles have been organized into generations, with several years between each model in a series. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was a third-generation console, released in the United States in 1985. It took six years until its replacement, the fourth-gen SNES, arrived in the US in 1991. Then it was another five years to the Nintendo 64 in 1996, and five years after that in 2001, we got the GameCube.

There were a few reasons why game consoles went several years between upgrades. Many of them didn't offer backwards compatibility, so each new model was starting from scratch with its game library—doing that repeatedly in a short time span just means you end up with a bunch of consoles with very few games. SEGA learned this the hard way, as it released the 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast all within five years (in the US), and then exited the console market entirely.

Fewer models also makes game development, manufacturing, and sales distribution somewhat simple. If you've ever shopped at Costco or another warehouse club store, or ordered electronics from Alibaba, you know that things are cheaper when you buy them in bulk. Nintendo is getting a fantastic deal for those NVIDIA Tegra X1 chipsets that have been in every Switch console sold since 2016. It's also pretty great for game developers to have a single device to test against that has surpassed over 140 million units.

The mid-generation upgrade

The eighth generation of home game consoles changed that long-running release cycle. Sony released the PlayStation 4 Pro in 2016 as an upgrade to the 2013 PlayStation 4, and Microsoft created the Xbox One X in 2017 as an upgrade to the 2013 Xbox One. These were the first modern "mid-generation" consoles, intended to be sold as more powerful alternatives to the base consoles, but not replacing them entirely.

This was a subtle but important change to the value proposition of game consoles. If you bought a console around the time of release, there could potentially be something better within 3 or 4 years, instead of the more typical 5-7 years. Microsoft and Sony made it clear these were optional upgrades, though, and game developers were barred from making games that were only compatible with the more powerful variant (and they still can't do that).

Sony and Microsoft both released new mainstream consoles in 2020: the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, respectively. Four years later, Sony has revealed its new mid-generation-upgrade, the PS5 Pro. Microsoft previously said it will reveal new hardware before the end of the year, which will likely be a similar mid-gen hardware refresh.

These mid-generation consoles have received many of the same responses over and over again, such as "why would I upgrade from the original model?" or "it's too expensive." The "just build a PC!" crowd also comes out of the woodwork each time a new console is announced, as if no one had ever considered that.

The decades-long tradition of generational game consoles has trained most people to evaluate every new console as a direct replacement for the previous model. If I have a PS3, I need to eventually get the PS4. If I have a Wii U, I need to get a Nintendo Switch. That's not true anymore, because mid-gen refreshes have ushered in the era of smartphone upgrade cycles for game consoles.

The new upgrade cycle

The day before the PlayStation 5 Pro was revealed, Apple announced its new iPhone 16 series and iPhone 16 Pro series. Those are phones that are minimal upgrades over the previous models, with prices ranging from $799 for the base iPhone 16 all the way to $1,599 for the Pro Max with 1TB storage. If you have a recent iPhone, and it's still working well for you, there's no reason to run out and buy the new model.

I didn't see anywhere near the same number of "that's too expensive!" or "who is this for?" reactions for the new iPhones, but it's not because the value proposition is different. We're just used to companies releasing new smartphones every year, including high-end models aimed at people with more disposable income or more niche needs. Some people buy a new phone when the old one stops working, some upgrade each year, and some wait a few years. A 2023 report from Assurant said the average age for devices turned in for upgrade and trade-in programs was "just over 3.5 years."

That's how we should think about game consoles now. We're not getting a new Xbox, PlayStation, or Nintendo Switch every year, but the upgrades are frequent enough that many of the same principles apply. It does not make sense for most people with a PS5 to go out and buy a PS5 Pro, just as it does not make sense for most people with an iPhone 15 to upgrade to an iPhone 16. The functional lifespans for game consoles are getting longer, just as the lifespans for smartphones are getting longer. You can still play many modern games on an Xbox One or PS4 from 2013, just as an iPhone from 4 or 5 years ago will still handle most typical smartphone functions.

A more rapid upgrade cycle for home consoles can be a good thing. If someone wants to buy a PlayStation console, they now have an option with newer and more powerful hardware, instead of the one hardware configuration that is already four years old (yes, I know the PS5 Slim is slightly different). The same games are available across both models, so people who already bought or will buy the original model aren't negatively impacted. In theory, everyone wins... except the game developers who now have to test games across more hardware configurations.

There are certainly valid complaints about the PS5 Pro: the disc drive is a paid add-on, the vertical stand isn't included, and so on. The starting price of $700 makes it a questionable value, but I would also argue that $1,600 iPhone Pro Max is a questionable value for most people. Not every tech product is aimed at the same market, and that's okay—just buy what you need or want to buy.

Speed it up

There is one remaining problem with these mid-generation upgrades: they don't last as long as the original models. The Xbox One X is an extension of the Xbox One software and hardware platform, not its own independent platform. Game developers are only allowed to create games for both devices, or ignore both of them. As game developers move on from the aging 2013 Xbox One, the 2017 Xbox One X is also left behind. The same is true of the PS4 and PS4 Pro.

This is also pretty close to how the smartphone industry works. In 2023, Samsung ended software updates for the Galaxy S10 series from 2019, from the $750 Galaxy S10e to the $1,000 Galaxy S10 Plus. It doesn't matter if you spent more money on the higher-end model, your device gets the same software support as the base model. However, there wasn't a multi-year gap between the Galaxy S10 Plus and the other models, like there currently is for these mid-generation upgrades.

If more frequent console generations are here to stay, and backwards compatibility isn't going anywhere, then it might make more sense to do full generational upgrades every few years. No more in-between models with more limited market adoption and shorter software support.

I know what you're thinking: "I'll have to buy a new console twice as often to play new games!" Game developers target different console generations based on the expected market and technical requirements, and I wouldn't expect that to change if console generations became more frequent. If only a tiny fraction of people own the latest Xbox or PlayStation console, most developers are going to continue making games that support previous generations. This already happened in recent history: adoption of the PS5 and Xbox Series X/S were initially slow due to the COVID-19 pandemic and supply shortages, so many games continued to be released for the previous generation. That's still ongoing for games with lower hardware requirements, such as Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth or WWE 2K24, both of which were released this year.

Again, look at smartphones. There are remarkably few mobile apps and games that require a brand new phone, or only work on the latest versions of iOS or Android. For example, the Facebook app for Android currently has Android 9.0 as a minimum requirement—that version was released in 2018, and it was rolled out as an update to some devices released before 2018.

I don't know if faster console generations will actually happen, or how Microsoft's upcoming Xbox hardware could change the market. I do know that consoles are now much more like smartphones. The hardware is lasting longer, you don't need to upgrade every time, and you can just ignore the overpriced models.