While both the next-generation consoles – Xbox 720 and Playstation 4 – have been garnering new information and leaks almost every day, nobody is entirely sure as to when really both, or any, of the consoles will make an appearance. However, this current situation doesn’t really augur well for any game developing company and, per reports, one such company, Ubisoft, wants them to be revealed faster.
Per Ubisoft, the best publisher of 2012, the company now needs new consoles because the current generation has lasted too long. Now considering that the PS3 and Xbox 360 are almost half a decade old and public interest in these consoles is declining slowly, according to NPD data from the US, the company could be right.
Discussing the “long” transition to new hardware, Yves Guillemot, CEO, Ubisoft, told Polygon in an interview: “I think that what has happened is the transition has been very long. You know, in the industry, we were used to changing machines every five years. This time we are in the seventh year of the 360. We need new consoles and at the end of the cycle generally the market goes down because there are less new IPs, new properties, so that damaged the industry a little bit.”
Guillemot added that many publishers and developers use the transition to a new console as an opportunity to "reinvent" themselves, and that these transitions “are the best times, are the best ways, to make all of our creators take more risks and do different things. When a console is out for a long time ... you don't take as much risks on totally new IPs because even if they are good, they don't sell as well."
The Ubisoft boss backed his opinion by stating that any developer who is taking risks and innovating is welcome because there are lots of hardcore gamers and they want new things and new experiences, where “the mass market will be more interested in having the same experience and doesn't want to take as much risks because it's not aware as much of what is going to change its experience.”
