Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot isn't listening to the noise that the next batch of consoles is going to be the last one. He is confident there will be future generations to succeed the Playstation 4 and the Xbox One.
In an interview with CVG, Yves reveals his conviction that consoles will keep going as they have the past 40 years. As he says, console manufacturers like Sony and Xbox will still want control over the delivery platform and dedicated machines are still the best way to guarantee that.
Yves also has very strong opinions in regards to the console cycle itself. He did want the current generation to end sooner than the eight years that it's been allowed to thrive. His line of thinking is that people would have bought so many consoles and games at this point that interest in the industry has dwindled.
He does appreciate that the prolonged delay has raised interest in Ubisoft's games on PS4 and Xbox One, and he also recognizes and plans to use the cloud's ability to improve games over a manner of years.
Ultimately, however, Yves thinks the business needs to stay in its old course and release new consoles every five years.
To Yves' credit, he is clearly not dismissive of the power of the cloud at all. Watch Dogs itself has a ten year plan to stay relevant. Rather, pragmatism is what drives him to be conservative about the console cycle, to keep a sustainable interest in new games and IPs. Whether this matches the interests of the console makers themselves is another thing entirely.
Source: CVG
