There is still a lot of life in the current generation of consoles (except the Wii, they've whored Mario all they can on it) so just get one. They aren't that expensive, especially if you get one of the older models (make sure it has a warranty).
I disagree, we've already reached the technical limit of our games and devs are having trouble extracting any extra power from them. It's exactly why Sony & MS are working on a new console as we speak- they know very well that this generation of consoles has run it's course. The tech is ancient and nothing compared to what we could have now, and yes it does affect game quality. A recent example is the rendering distance in LA Noire(as-well as RDR & GTA), that bug could be eliminated by better tech, very easily. That's why most PC games no longer have these issues and said issues will be non-existent on BF3, a game primarily designed for the PC.