Industry rumours persist that both Microsoft and Sony are hard at work doing the necessary research and development of their next consoles – and it’s likely that they are. Not at least planning a new console at this late stage in the generational cycle would be tantamount to suicide.
so they’re working on it? But when will Sony consider releasing a PlayStation successor?
"Looking at the platform cycle, when the platform becomes something game developers are not able to improve their creations with, that’s the time we have to really seriously consider shifting to the next generation," Sony Worldwide boss Shuhei Yoshida told Eurogamer
The industry is a little divided on the need for next-generation hardware. On the one hand, PC’s have eclipsed consoles with regards to graphics, and developers would like a little more RAM to help them catch up. On the other, the world is still reeling from that whole recession thing, and a brand new console, with a brand new set of development tools would be prohibitively expensive.
"As far as we are concerned, we have no desire now to do that†Yoshida said.
"Gamers always need something new and more exciting. If they’re seeing just similar types of games coming year after year, they will quickly lose their interest. Looking like that, when you see games coming out on PS3, both the traditional type of games as well as new kind of games using PS Move, there is a lot more we can do from the game development standpoint. So as long as we and our developers can create new experiences that are more exciting to consumers, I see no need to transition into newer generation."
Financially, it makes sense for platform holders to ride this generation out, but I must admit that I’m bored of the current hardware, and a nice new console reveals would be just the thing to spice things up.
Source : Eurogamer
Last Updated: August 23, 2011
