There's been a lot of talk about the next generation of consoles lately, people seem ready for the Playstation 4 and the Xbox 3. Whether the technology has caught up with which to exceed their expectations is a completely different discussion, but its obvious that people are ready for something new.
Mike Capp, company president at Epic Games, has spoke with Develop about what he feels the future holds, and what needs to change after this generation.
"I think it’s very important that a gamer sees an Xbox Next or PlayStation Next and can clearly see the tech is not possible on current consoles. Otherwise they won’t be a success. And that’s a very tall order. I mean, PS3 is still very bad-ass – Heavy Rain looks great. To blow that away we need the hardware to do it.
"I think another thing that’s changed is the way people are willing to spend their money. Consoles need to adapt to this. Game revenue has moved to the service model and the microtransactions model. Consoles need to start being comfortable with that. They need to be able to do something where small virtual items can be sold and bought for 20¢ without a long certification process and a price approval process.
"Right now we’re not even allowed to change the prices of virtual content. We’re not even allowed to set the prices. I just don’t think this protectionist approach is going to be successful in a world where the price of virtual items changes on a day-today basis.
"Double-A games will never come back unless we get rid of this notion of a game being $60 or not released. The console manufacturers need to let this happen. The best way of driving developers to PC is telling them they have no freedom in what prices they can set for virtual items. It would be great to have the level of freedom that, say, Steam gives you."
Will it ever happen? It's nice to think that the relatively immediate future will allow for an online system from either console maker that is as open as all that, but it's unlikely. It's not impossible, but what are the chances of things changing so rapidly?
Still, it'll be interesting to see where we're taken over the next few years…
