Fed up with game delays? Remakes replacing new games? An overall lack of content? Too bad. You'd better get used to it.

As "next-gen" game consoles settle in to their lifecycles and become the "current-gen" consoles, an interesting dichotomy is emerging. On the one hand, consoles are selling faster than ever; Microsoft and Sony constantly tout the fact Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are outpacing sales of Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 at this point in their respective histories.

On the other hand, even though the user base of these consoles is expanding rapidly, the number of new games you can play on them is rather lacking when compared to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 at this point in their lifecycles. 2007 was the second full year of the Xbox 360's lifecycle, analogous to 2015 in the life of Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Here's what 2007 looked like on Xbox 360: BioShock, Portal, Assassin's Creed, Rock Band, Crackdown, Lost Planet, Modern Warfare, Mass Effect, and I'm going to stop there arbitrarily.

In other words, a constant assault of new franchises, most of exceptional quality, quite a few of them brilliantly innovative—remember that even Modern Warfare, at that point, was the risk-taking game that changed Call of Duty from historical World War II period piece to the near-future shooter that defines the genre today.

We're still a couple months from the game industry's E3 trade show, at which publishers and console makers will mostly finish making their game announcements for 2015. But even after E3, it's highly unlikely, borderline impossible, that this second year of the new consoles will even come close to what we saw in 2007.

Scroll through Wikipedia's list of released and upcoming 2015 games, and you'll notice a few things: Few of them are coming to Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and the ones that are mostly fall into categories that are not "big new triple-A game franchise."

"Remasters" of old content. 2015 is littered with these. Dark Souls II, Borderlands, Resident Evil, Devil May Cry, and again I'm going to arbitrarily stop there because you get the point. PlayStation 4 and Xbox One aren't backward compatible with the previous generation's games, giving publishers an opportunity to port said games to the new platform and sell them again with a few upgrades. This isn't bad if you're a fan of the games (or missed them first time around), but it's no substitute for new games.

New entries in proven, established franchises. Yes, I'm going to play Batman: Arkham Knight when it's released in June (delayed from October, 2014), but I don't think it will feel nearly as new and fresh as playing Arkham Asylum on Xbox 360. You know what you're in for with Halo 5. And Sony has Uncharted 4 … whoops, that's been delayed until 2016.

Indie games. I love indie games! But "lots of small games by scrappy independent creators" is not why one buys a pair of $400 state-of-the-art consoles.

Licensed games. Having exhausted all other options, they're actually making a game based on Mad Max.

There's one constant among all of these categories, and that is "risk mitigation." All of the problems we saw with game consoles a few years ago when we said the game console was dead have metastasized, and we're seeing the results: First, the B-tier games died, then the A-tier, and now the triple-A tier is being winnowed as publishers make bigger and bigger bets on a smaller and smaller slate of games.

And if said game isn't somehow tied to a previously existing, provably bankable intellectual property, it's lucky to even get off the drawing board. Sony released a new IP this year, The Order: 1886, and it got crappy reviews. Not good for the next time somebody pitches a totally new idea.

Even Nintendo's games have homogenized significantly this generation, as single-player games give way to couch multiplayer games, and smaller franchises go forgotten (Are you okay, Metroid? Reply if you are okay.) while more reliably bankable series already had had multiple entries. Third party publishers have narrowed their Wii U slates to a tiny handful of games, or nothing.

Except indie games, I mean. And let me repeat myself, lest I be misunderstood: I love indie games! And the fact Sony and Microsoft don't have huge new AAA releases to crow about has been fantastic for indies in two ways: One, both console makers have been strongly incentivized to refine and streamline their submissions policies so as to ensure an uninterrupted flow of new indie games, and two, they're putting their huge marketing machines to work hyping them.

All of Xbox was chattering about #IDARB for the last few months, and now Sony's pushing Axiom Verge as the new hotness for PlayStation 4. Both are small-scale, pixel-graphics, retro throwback games made by tiny teams. This is the first time since the actual Super Nintendo that games like this have gotten so much heat.

But do you need a whole $400 game console and a $50 per year subscription to an online gaming service for that sort of experience? No. Consoles are slowly finding their entire raison d'être not eliminated, but being squished down through a funnel.

What's going to happen to consoles? It's hard to say. Microconsoles like Amazon Fire TV haven't exactly taken off. Maybe that changes if and when Apple finally offers an Apple TV that plays games. Maybe not. Maybe the kids raised on Minecraft and free-to-play phone games won't pick up consoles when they go to college. Maybe Sony and Microsoft follow them to wherever they go.

No matter what happens in the future: Welcome to triple-A videogames in 2015. You demand to be wowed by ever-increasing graphics fidelity; publishers need more ironclad guarantees that those investments are going to pay off. This means fewer games, more licenses, and more remakes. This is not a problem that Sony and Microsoft are on the verge of solving. This is the new normal.