Should consoles be upgradeable?

[Joel]

The more you look into console generations and the various histories of the hardware, the more you see that consoles actually don't make a lot of money. Sega tried the upgradable path as well. They had the Sega CD and the various bit increaser piece of hardware they had several power packs that were really hard to fit all into one space. Consoles being upgradable just makes them a step closer to being a PC and I put the money towards something that forces developers to bend to my hardware, not me bend to what they want to use.

 

[MorgUK]

I think a half-way house would be good, so instead of waiting 7 years for a new console, you could buy an upgrade pack 3 and 1/2 years after release, allowing games to develop further instead of being limited. We all saw the graphical/development wall the previous gen consoles hit and nothing more could be squeezed out of the hardware. Any more upgrades wouldn't work as you might as well buy a PC, considering all the new consoles are practically the same.

 

[corporatenoun]

You won't find many PC gamers who would switch to consoles if they had parts you could upgrade. You won't find many console gamers with the capability of building their own gaming machine. Upgradeable consoles wouldn't be very sensible to either demographic. The Steam Machine could change this but I doubt they will have a lot of interchangeable parts.

 

[wowtgp]

Will there be any difference between the consoles and PC then? Why do we play on consoles? Because of how easy it is to just plug ad play. I have my PC f I want to play like PC.

 

[mccanono]

I agree to some point. However, I do not agree that all components can be upgraded.

Perhaps the HDD?

 

[onezeon]

A day 1 console NEEDS to play as well as the same console 5-6 years later...it's how casual gamers/parents know that any game will simply work as intended.

Will never change imo
Steam box stuff is nothing like the mainstream consoles of ps4/x1/wiiu etc

 

[Dame6089]

At the end of the day, it's a business. It would be awesome to simply upgrade consoles rather than buying new ones every 6-7 years. However, that would cut revenues for companies significantly.

 

[The Unlosing Ranger]

No. That would make them as expensive and hard to set up as computers, it would kill them. Also, the developers wouldn't have a standard to develop for anymore.

 

[Dame6089]

No. That would make them as expensive and hard to set up as computers, it would kill them. Also, the developers wouldn't have a standard to develop for anymore.

Never thought of that, but great point. No way are your average parents going to know how to set up an advanced gaming computer. If consoles functioned that way, they would lose a lot of their younger and casual market.

 

[iShootRocks]

The only reason I would want this to happen is so I could reduce the price of the console. Other than that I'd rather just buy the whole thing and be done with it for a few years! Isn't that why most people get consoles? We like simplicity.

 

[The Unlosing Ranger]

Never thought of that, but great point. No way are your average parents going to know how to set up an advanced gaming computer. If consoles functioned that way, they would lose a lot of their younger and casual market.

Exactly. This is why I don't really understand where the SteamBox fits in. It's not as good as building your own PC and it's not "plug and play" like consoles. It's kind of in the weird middle and I just don't know if people will really care too much about it, specially since it uses a Linux build instead of Windows.