The only console that has survived more than 5 years is the original Nintendo. It was active for 11 years (1985-1996) and still sells well today for like 50 U.S dollars. All others (SNES, Genesis, Atari, N64, Playstation, etc) have come and gone, so I don't see this push for next-gen games and consoles as "recent". It's always been that way.
It's funny you should bring it up though because I was just talking about exactly this with a friend last night. I told him I bought NHL 07 for the xbox and I feel I got the shaft since most of the inovasion went into the 360 version. NHL 98 for a Pentium PC was WAY more interactive than this "newer" version. My complaints aside I wondered why is it that companies, instead of going all out on the last games of a dying console and really push it to the max, they instead half-ass it.
Turns out, according to my buddy, developers really start pushing a system a year to two years after it's been on the market. A good example is Gears of War for the 360. Simply brilliant with the in-game graphics identical to its cinematics. The developers said that with GOW they are already pushing the system in certain areas, but that they'll go full out on the sequal. That is why Halo 3 is THE game to anticipate, if Bungie does it right, this could be THE best 360 game from graphics to gameplay to not sleeping for the next month.