At GamingBolt, we’re already big fans of the upgradeable, iterative consoles idea, believing it to be the future of the industry. With Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo now all officially exploring the concept in some form, it appears to be a direction the industry as a whole is heading in- and it also seems that at least some people within the industry agree with our assessment.
In podcast with Game Informer, Oddworld series creator Lorne Lanning spoke on a number of things, but perhaps the most enthusiastic that he sounded about anything was the potential of iterative consoles, going forward.
“Consoles are typically six years (five to seven years),” Lanning said. “I asked [Sony Worldwide Studios head Shuhei] Yoshida a question at dinner a few nights before DICE 2015, I said “What does the PlayStation 5 look like?” and he said “You mean if”. It was a really interesting thing, he’s hinting at “we need to be more agile, none of us know what the future looks like, so how do we adopt to it faster?”. To me, that’s the sort of way he was thinking about it which I think is the right way to think about it. The idea that you’re going to release a piece of technology that lasts seven years into the future, I think it’s less and less viable even though the generations are lasting longer.
“It seems like that’s in conflict, but when you look at generations of smartphones…And I’ll give you an example. We’ve talked to some of the biggest smartphone companies and what do they want? They want us to be releasing our new PS4/XB1 games titles simultaneously on their latest, most powerful smartphones, with almost the same image fidelity.
“What’s going to happen is that smartphones will get progressively more powerful. We’ve talked to Japanese publishers like Square and they’re releasing on mobiles first and then come to consoles later. Not necessarily out of fidelity, but because that’s where their audience is.”
Certainly, it appears as though Lanning understands that the traditional console generation model is outdated, and no longer fit for a market where consumer electronics evolve in a matter of months- consoles need to keep up, or they risk being left behind.
The PS4K and the Xbox One Elite have not yet been officially announced- but we can probably expect an unveiling at E3 this year.
[Transcription by WCCFTech]