Tuesday 28 June 2016

EA, Ubisoft, Take-Two Talk Positively About PS4 Neo and Xbox Scorpio

EA, Ubisoft, and Take-Two have discussed Sony and Microsoft's decision to introduce more powerful iterations of its existing gaming hardware, each reflecting positively the moves.

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz, Laura Miele, head of global publishing at EA, described the adoption of a mobile phone-like upgrade path as a "positive evolution."

"I perceive it as upgrades to the hardware that will actually extend the cycle," she said. "I actually see it more as an incredibly positive evolution of the business strategy for players and for our industry and definitely for EA.

"The idea that we would potentially not have an end of cycle and a beginning of cycle I think is a positive place for our industry to be and for all of the commercial partners as well as players."

She continued: "The idea that you have a more streamlined thoroughfare transition I think is a big win... [with] things like backwards compatibility and the evolution ... So it's not my perception that the hardware manufacturers are going to be forcing upgrades. I really see that they're trying to hold on and bring players along. If players want to upgrade, they can. There will be benefit to that. But it's not going to be punitive if they hold on to the older hardware."

Alain Corre, Ubisoft's head of EMEA, was equally as optimistic, saying "the beautiful thing is [the upgrades] will not split the communities."

Corre focused on the opportunity to move to new hardware without abandoning years of investing in the previous one as a key positive.

"I think with the evolution of technology it's better than what we had to do before, doing a game for next-gen and a different game from scratch for the former hardware," he said. "Now we can take the best of the next console but still have super good quality for the current console, without breaking the community up. We are quite big fans of this approach."

Finally Strauss Zelnick, head of Take-Two, said "it would be very good" to have a lansdcape where developers can "put a game out and you don't have to worry about it" and made a comparison to TV.

"When you make a television show you don't ask yourself, 'What monitor is this going to play on?' It could play on a 1964 color television or it could play on a brand new 4K television, but you're still going to make a good television show."

Zelnick believes the industry will reach a point where "hardware becomes a backdrop."

"Constantly more powerful hardware gives us an opportunity but it would be great to get to a place where we don't have a sine curve anymore, and I do see the sine curve flattening but I'm not sure I agree it's going away yet," he added. "That doesn't change any of our activities; we still have to make the very best products in the market and we have to push technology to its absolute limit to do so."

At Microsoft’s E3 2016 press conference, the company officially confirmed the existence of a new console, codenamed Project Scorpio. It will feature 8 cores, 320Gb memory bandwidth, and six teraflops of performance. This, Microsoft says, will allow for true fully uncompressed 4K gaming. It has been indicated that Scorpio will not simply be upscaling to 2160p.

Xbox boss Dave McCarthy said the new system "wipes out" traditional generational boundaries in that your Xbox One games will work on the new console, something that hasn't always been true for previous console cycles.

Microsoft Game Studios boss, Shannon Loftis, responded to worries about market confusion by saying she doesn't foresee consumers becoming confused or frustrated. She added that Microsoft is actually releasing the new consoles in response to fan feedback.

Sony, meanwhile, is developing a more powerful PlayStation 4, codenamed Neo.

Neo is rumored to launch in 2016, while Scorpio is expected in holiday 2017.



from GameSpot http://www.gamespot.com/articles/ea-ubisoft-take-two-talk-positively-about-ps4-neo-/1100-6441303/

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