The PS3 used a new cell chip. It wasn't the hit it should have been as it required programmers to work specifically for that chip to get the best out of it and it was different to what PCs were using which they were familiar with.
Now the X-Box and PS4 uses PC hardware as it's easier to program for and what people know. If you use PC hardware then you benefit from the economies of scale, and it's what people know.
High end consoles wont happen anytime soon. They are made as a cheaper alternative to PC, but that divide is starting to slowly blur. When you'll have a choice: buy a console that cant be upgraded or buy a PC that can be upgraded later for almost the same price, you wont find many people who'll buy consoles.
You need a large market in order for games developers to put the effort (and money) in.
Game development is a lot more complex these days.
It's a shame, as I long for the days, again, where the consoles, as they were custom designed from ground up for playing games, without any of the legacy associated with a computer/pc were the machines that left the computers in the dust.
Not like today where the console is the poor mans PC, but the console to be made the kind again, albeit at a higher price than consoles are these days.
Such consoles of the past were probably £1000 - £1500 in real terms today.
I don't get this need for bigger, faster, shinier. What we have already is astounding, but the real point is aren't the best games about gameplay? Machines 25 years ago were built from the ground up to be amazing because they had to be to get the gameplay up to standard. They don't need to be now. We've reached that point and most of the "improvements" are about bigger, faster, shinier. Nintendo have proved you don't need it to make good games.
Because that would cause sales to slump.
Nintendo's sales have hardly slumped with the Switch
10 million: PS4 units sold in 8 months on the market10 million: Nintendo Switch units sold in 9 months on the market
But the Switch was offering something different to say a PS4 or Xbox.
You can't play a PS4 on your daily commute. You want to play the best looking games, buy a PS4 Pro or Xbox One X. You want to play some decent looking games and some Ninty exclusives while on the bus/train/plane or while the wife is hogging the TV then buy a Switch.
With consoles they should always try and push, we might not have had a huge jump from PS3 to PS4 or 360 to One but look at what you can use a console for now, It can be your central media hub and also be used to stream/recordyour gameplay. Play 4K discs and games and a be a central part of your living room.
Bring back Clive Sinclair, he was never afraid to try new things.
Many flopped admittedly but that's how you can take jumps as opposed to just fiddle with the old design each time.
Perhaps it's just the money men as opposed to the tech geeks, who would just want to do try and do something new for the technical sake of it, as opposed to needing to guarantee financial returns withing well planned time-frames?
Why does "always try and push" have to be about graphics though?