People need to get this idea of annual upgraded hardware releases out of their head. That works for the smartphone market b/c the overwhelming amount of people who upgrade their stuff do so on contract. The contract basically subsidizes the cost of the phone in the short term, even if it adds up in the long term.
Consoles do not have a subsidization model that works. Games are not a service to an extent that companies can use game sales or subscription revenue to offset hardware costs and thus get the majority of gamers on annual refresh cycles. In other words, the amount of users any company would be selling the new year's model to decreases for each additional year after the base system is sold, especially if the games are scalable across iterations, because only the hardcore gamers (who make up a small amount of total gamers) would continue buying them for incremental upgrades.
Most will wait out for the actual next-gen system. Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo know this, which is why that's the model they'll stick with until digital platform services is a reality in the next 10 years.
You can outright skip the Saturn's boot up by holding the A, B, or C button after you turn it on. Works with each model.
That's the only other one I can think of atm.
I don't think anyone's suggesting new hardware annually, for the reasons you suggested. But consoles do undergo revisions. Usually 'slim' ones, to keep the product attractive and the manufacturing prices down etc. These tend to happen after 2 or 3 years. Then after two of these revisions, there's a hardware 'reset' and a new generation of systems. From which the company has to build up a library completely from scratch again.
What people are proposing is that instead of that system, that every 2/3 years the next console revision is actually more powerful, but still backwards compatible. The new revision plays games at a higher 'spec', just like a better PC does. New games have to support the old box to be certified. And there's never any hardware reset. It would benefit Nintendo, in particular, who struggle with a small library and lack of support.
So, think of the smartphone thing, only every 3 years or so. I personally think it makes sense. You'd also get a lot of hardcore users upgrading.