No New Games Consoles in Near Future !
Friday, February 26 2010 @ 02:36 AM GMT
EA exec thinks current gen is here to stay....
2010 is the fifth year of the Xbox 360, and the fourth year since the Wii launched. Historically this would be about the time when gamers looked forward to a new console. Times have changed though and Microsoft's Project Natal is about as close we will get to a "new" console in the near future. So why is this? Electronic Arts' CFO Eric Brown thinks pricing and powerful hardware have stopped Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony bringing out new consoles.
I think pricing has not come down as much as we would have expected at this point in the cycle compared to the last. Last cycle, approximately 48 percent of PlayStation 2 units were sold at a price point of $149 or less. Clearly at $299 we're nowhere near that price point.
He has a point. The 360 and PS3 are not cheap, though you are getting a lot more tech than you ever got in the PS2. And this is key. What major upgrades could we realistically expect to see from an Xbox 720 or PS4? You would normally expect better graphics from a new console but Brown argues that thanks to the 1080p maximum resolution on HD TV the graphical differences would be minimal.
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 have a multi-billion capital investment to develop the next generation hardware, the question I would ask is, 'If you were to produce that, what would you display it on?' You could upgrade in theory, but you wouldn't get the obvious graphic benefit that we saw that drove the transitions in the prior cycle.
Of course, the one console that would see a graphical benefit from a hardware upgrade is the Wii. But overall I think Brown is right. I wouldn't expect a new 360 till 2012/13 at the earliest and at least a year later for a new Playstation. Expect a ton of software updates though - especially for the online services - and the occasional peripheral (Natal, Arc etc).
