I think transitioning to a new platform is difficult and devs would lose a lot of money if they just stopped supporting older platforms as soon as the new ones came out. They have to wait a year or so until the majority has moved on to the new consoles. It sucks but I understand why they do it.
Gonna just try and help put this cross-gen thing to rest with you once and for all...
Yes cross-gen happens, but not from a first-party standpoint. Think of it, how many games did sony and even MS release in 2014 that were cross-gen? Most of the cross-gen spillover that happened in 2013 were games that released that year. And even then with sony, it didn't apply to all of them (GT6).
Yes, we expect the third parties to release most of their game as cross-gen titles, but that too only usually happens in the first year too. But we expect first party to have enough money to not need the shared userbase of both gens and to make stand out exclusive titles that showcase the benefits of the next-gen hardware.
The reason it's such a big deal now, and that people here and in the media are talking about it, is simple; MS has outright come out and said that for the first 2 years all their first-party output will be cross-gen. This means that the first true SeX exclusive you see from MS comes out around 2023. Third-party devs usually even stop making cross-gen titles by 2021.
What's even really sad here is the reason MS is actually doing this. But I m not going to get into that. I'll say this much though, MS also has Xcloud. If that ends up being all its touted out to be, then they shouldn't even need to have any of this ross gen nonsense as people an still play (stream) full-blown SeX exclusives on their XB1s.