According to EA’s Chief Financial Officer, Eric Brown, the latest generation of consoles released to the public has changed the dynamic of the industry and the usual cycle between console generations. While gamers are usually in a comfort zone of expecting a new ring of consoles every five to six years, Brown believes that that is no longer necessary.
Speaking at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet conference, Brown provided his own reasoning as to why the next generation of consoles won’t be needed any time soon and how much he believes the development cost will bear down on developers to the point of it not really being worth it.
“Today we have two of the three consoles that operate in full high-definition and are running games at 60 frames-per-second. If you step back and say if it’s a multi-billion capital dollar investment for the next generation, the question I would ask is if you were to produce that then what would you display it on? There’s really nothing in terms of broadly available consumer viewing technology other than 1080p flat panel televisions and so you could upgrade in theory but you wouldn’t get the obvious graphical benefit that we saw really drove the sharp transitions in the prior cycle.”
When I think about it, I have to completely agree with the logic behind his statements. Currently, the technology is to a point where it’s going to be harder to reach the next level of entertainment within the industry. Considering how far the consoles are already pushing current technology, it’s hard to believe that the next slate of consoles from Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo could really be that much of an upgrade on an overall level.
Feel free to check out everything Brown had to say at Gi.biz.
Its good they don’t think that a next generation console is need anytime soon. The current generation of consoles have a lot of potential to last many more years and there are still a lot of great games coming out for them.
good new, Yay no need to spend alot of money again buying a XBOX 720 or PlayStation 4.