Asked about the mid-generation console upgrades (PlayStation 4 Neo and Xbox One Scorpio) during their earnings call yesterday, EA CEO Andrew Wilson talked about how they think the new machines will be great for the industry, and could lead us to a place where console generations are replaced by hardware upgrades:
[…] at a macro level, we’re excited about what Sony and Microsoft have announced. The reality for us is, again, in a networked world, liquidity of players is really, really important. And what we’ve seen over the last decade or more with respect to PC gamers is that community has continued to grow and it has grown a world where the hardware refresh cycle has been disconnected from the software refresh cycle. And what that’s meant is that irrespective of what kind of device you have within kind of a seven to 10-year timeframe, you’re able to play with a much, much bigger global community.
What we see now with the things that have been talked about with the mid-cycle refresh is that only going to enhance the size and engagement levels inside the communities. For us as a publisher, we’re in a very strong place. We’ve been building across platform and across console and for scalable architectures like PC for some time. So the notion that we would build once an experience that can scale up and down across an entire spectrum of consoles, whether the first phase, the second phase or the third phase over time is not something that’s foreign to us and something that we’re very energized about because, again, I think we have strength in a networked world and we have strength where there is a requirement to build these scaled experiences that keep players connected.
So on balance, we think this is great for the industry. It will almost certainly extend the console cycle almost to an infinite level if we get to a point where there’s just constant hardware upgrades and constant software upgrades but we are able through the scaling of our games to keep the community always together.
CFO Blake Jorgensen also said EA believes there will be an uptick in the number of consoles sold this year.
Elsewhere in the call, Wilson said they’re “very excited” about PlayStation VR. After adding that the Star Wars Battlefront VR Mission game is “super fun and super exciting,” Wilson said, “[…] PlayStation VR I think is going to be a great step in the evolution of our industry and the evolution of how people play games and we’re going to continue to invest there.”
[Source: Seeking Alpha]
