MegaGames recently quoted Sony Worldwide Studios President, Shuhei Yoshida, who, addressing peers, stated that the firm has been hard at work on new hardware since 2007. Now Ubisoft is saying that it will be at least 2-3 years before Sony and Microsot's new hardware surfaces.
It is becoming evident that in times of financial hardship, the big 3 console manufacturers are unwilling to take a risk and are looking for alternative ways of reviving and repackaging this-gen hardware.
Console manufacturers are faced with big decisions this year, how do they cope with the imminent dangers posed by the various cloud gaming services? Do they plan their business based on those services, such as OnLive which launched June 18th, and if so, do they plan as if those services will kick-off and be a success? As if the services will take a while to reach functional levels? Or as if they will be complete failures?
For the time being it seems that they have chosen the life support route. According to Ubisoft's Head of UK Marketing, Murray Pannel, next-next gen is two to three years away. The Ubisoft propaganda master claims that the Kinect and Move additions to the consoles are revolutionary enough to breathe new life into the existing hardware, enough to make the five year old formats seem fresh to gamers.The example he uses is hard to refute as industry analysts have been screaming at Nintendo to bring HD to its Wii but although the Japanese have been stubborn the console is still selling strong, having reached a total of 70.93 million consoles sold.
The news, for anyone thinking that they've seen enough FPS games claim the King of Graphics title, is not that great as Sony is still officially linked to its 10 year life-cycle prediction for the PS3 and Microsoft is now claiming that Kinect will provide at least 5 years of additional life-support for the X360. That's a long time to breathe through a machine.