Square Enix: Current-Gen should have been gone already
Speaking with Gamesindustry.biz, Square Enix director of worldwide technology Julien Merceron stated that keeping the current generation of consoles running for so long is the biggest mistake both Microsoft and Sony have ever made. The reason for this being that it has forced developers to look for alternative platforms:
“This generation has been way too long, and I say this because you have a lot of developers that work on a new platform, and perhaps will not succeed, so they will wait for the next generation, and will jump on that platform. You could not do that with this generation though. So these developers went elsewhere to see if the grass was greener. They found web browsers, they found iOS, they found other things and a lot of them won’t come back to the hardware platforms.
“So you could look at it that thanks to Microsoft and Sony and the length of this generation, it helped the emergence of other platforms and helped them get strong before the next hardware comes out.”
His vision is somewhat shared by Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter who recently stated that he expects to see a 34% year-on-year sales decrease for June due to – amongst other things – a lack of willingness from publishers to risk launching new IP still on this generation of hardware:
“In this unprecedented eighth year of the console cycle, we believe there are few new intellectual properties to reinvigorate interest in the games sector/ Consumers have been offered a never-ending series of sequels, and have been offered fewer choices each year for the last several years, with the result being waning interest in new software purchases and an unprecedented three years of software sales declines,”
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