With the new generation of game consoles ever looming, should developers take a rest and let people enjoy their consoles for a while longer before they have to start thinking about forking out the cash for the next generation Xbox or PlayStation?

As someone who held onto their Xbox Crystal for years after the Xbox 360 came out and slowly and stubbornly gave into the fact that having no new games being released onto the original Xbox platform was a problem, I can say yes, the development of gaming platforms needs to take a break.

System updates and even extra content for games are now available almost instantly onto your game console, updating what and how you play from your home whilst still paying gaming platform developers. The Xbox 360 dashboard alone has changed completely beyond recognition in the last few months, constantly giving gamers more and more choices of what to spend their money on or just updating their console for free, allowing it to take on features such as recommendations based on your gaming history and the ability to download films or watch television. These updates may not be the something completely new and revolutionary that some gamers are waiting for, but most are comfortable with where things are at now.

The rivalry of Xbox and PlayStation has more or less settled down, with people having chosen a side, sticking to it and just enjoying  one of the items that thousands of years worth of discoveries and inventions has provided them – so why go any further? Such gaming series such as Mass Effect and Fallout have a die hard fanbase, but with the next instalments of these games having being said to be under development for the new generation of consoles, will gamers be put off and generally just unable to pay for a new console and brand new games? Whilst Microsoft has hinted at a fairly affordable price tag  for their next console (“afforable” compared to other consoles and Microsoft’s own past releases, anyway) will people still surge to purchase the latest gaming platform and new releases? With mass unemployment and student debt rising three-fold in the past year, we can guess that whilst there will be still be an interest and as always, a market, for the consoles, it will be considerably smaller than the release of the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 saw.

The video game industry has indisputably thrived and made huge technological advances in the past 20 years alone, becoming  worth $74 billion at the end of 2011 and setting projections of being worth around $115 billion by 2015 thanks to progresses and the rebirth of popularity in mobile gaming. With the up and coming Xbox and PlayStation, both rumoured for release in early 2014, it’s definitely arguable that we could do without these for a few more years, and judging by the figures so could the industry!