Video Game System Generations Research Paper(s)

I am curious as to know if anyone has done a paper or know of a paper which deals with the generations of gaming systems. I see a trend in years of development in games and hardware in every past generation and this next-generation of consoles should last the longest of any previous generation. 

Reasons for curiosity are that I am interested in writing an article for fun and having too much free time despite having much distractions. Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks. 

I wrote something a while back for a speech but it was across the board.  It was to validate that video games are a medium for art, not just entertainment.