Well MS has cut their lifespan to 4 years, which I hope doesn't become a trend. I think the market leader sets the trend so as long as Sony is in charge, the market will really shift about 5 to 6 years. It's in a console manufacturer's best interest to lengthen the lifespan of a system to as long as they can. I think the reason we see MS doing this is they entered late and now they need to get a jump on Sony if they expect to compete.

I know the comparison to the PC is apples and oranges given what you use each of them for, but it was just an example of dropping a chunk of change in something that will last you only a couple years.

The thing is there is quite a difference between a high end gamer pc and what you need to use email, office, and surf the web (or even home jukebox). The first might be $800-1500, the other you can probably buy second hand for $100-300 or even get someones hand me down.

I don't think MS has necessarily cut the lifespan to 4 years, its really just a result of the late arrival of the xbox and trying to beat the ps3 release this time around.

Any question of doing that has been put to rest indefinitely. I was just given a complete working NES yesterday (I fried mine over a decade ago) and I will spend the time and money that might have gone to a new system revisiting the joy of the NES.