During their respective earnings calls this week, representatives from both Electronic Arts and Ubisoft forecast doom and gloom for traditional console hardware.
"Now on the console side, we expect there will be new consoles that are going to make this market continue to grow and we feel it's... we'll still have another generation of consoles before we have new types of consoles coming to the market," Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot said. (per GameSpot).
Investors pressed for a definition for these "new types" of game consoles, asking if Guillemot believed streaming was the distribution method of the future. His answer: yes, but not anytime soon. "We believe in streaming--it demands lots of bandwidth," he said. "We think it's going to grow but today, with the types of games we have, it will still take a bit of time to be more popular."
EA's CFO Blake Jorgensen made similar comments a few days earlier. Via GameSpot: "Our business model is so much more diverse now than it has been historically that the notion of a console cycle becomes somewhat irrelevant in our ability to generate strong earnings and cash flow. So we'll all be interested to see where Microsoft and Sony come out if they do something at E3 or sometime in the year to come. We're excited about the continued growth in the business and not afraid of a cycle change if that was to occur."
EA's business model isn't the only facet of the company adapting to change. During his call, Jorgensen fielded inquiries regarding the all-but-confirmed PlayStation 4 upgrade (codenamed "Neo") and the position it and other half-step consoles may occupy in the marketplace.
"In terms of any mid-cycle upgrades, I can't predict," he said, referring to the likelihood of brand new consoles (as in a PlayStation 5 versus a PlayStation "4.5" half step) offering backward compatibility to capitalize on droves of existing software. "What I can tell you is what we've heard publicly from the console makers: they are realizing the compatibility issue across consoles is an important consumer issue.
EA and other publishers hope that consumers will be able to carry their (likely digital) game libraries forward from now on, believing it will incentivize upgrading to new hardware.
Will PlayStation Neo, the NX, and a possible Xbox One upgrade mark the end of consoles? Ubisoft's Guillemot doesn't think so. He foresees at least one more traditional hardware generation "before we go to streaming."
EA's Peter Moore likewise believes streaming is the obvious next step, no matter how far off the bandwidth needed to make it ubiquitous. "Games will be accessed by streaming technology, so we don't need hardware intermediaries in between the two. If you and I want to play Battlefield 12 against each other, we'll just jump into a game via whatever monitor we happen to have in our homes. It'll be on a chip, rather than in a box."
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