You can't deny the timing is too suspicious tho.
Nintendo has been talking about regular upgrades across multiple devices so they don't have to start from scratch every gen for quite some time now. Then you have Microsoft taking a similar approach with WUP and now, Sony is doing a "mid-gen" upgrade when NX is around the corner.
I agree with you that Nintendo (alone) didn't force/influence Sony to go with PS4.5 but when you see your strongest competition (Microsoft) doing something similar as the weakest one (Nintendo) then obviously there's something going on in the industry.
Is it though? Or is it a potentially foolish knee jerk reaction to a coincidental move by the two companies with failing hardware to regain relevancy that will almost certainly not move the needle?
The NX would have to be a complete reversal of Nintendo's approach to its traditional branding, hardware design and the industry at large, including acceptance that third parties are more important than they are, which from what we know doesn't seem to be the case at all, so I very much doubt the NX will sell well enough to warrant its future hypothetical NX 2 incremental upgrade.
MS seems to be abandoning Console gaming as we know it altogether, concentrating on Windows 10, and are very unlikely to continue pouring billions into the black whole Xbox has always been now it's clear they're never going to 'take the living room'. Worldwide, the entire Xbox brand is just dead, at home sales are down YOY, and a hardware refresh is not going to reverse those fortunes.
Meanwhile, Sony, the market leader, is selling gangbusters with its more traditional and gaming focused approach, and has an incredibly highly anticipated new hardware venture in the form of PSVR on the horizon that is banking on its current hardware longevity and simple plug and play set up to outsell both the other consoles and out compete the other high end VR manufacturers for that new market. Muddying the waters with an unnecessary power increase just runs counter to both there current successful stratergy and future plans.
So yeah, all three console manufacturers might be looking into incremental changes, but 2 are doing it from a position of weakness, desperation and uncertainty, on the back of systemic failures in their approaches to the industry over many years, and the third seems to be following their bad ideas off a cliff into the unknown.
It's less a industry wide movement following a logical progression of established patterns and trends, and more two death rattles and a potential suicide.
