While the PS4 and Xbox One are upon us at last, the reviews for major launch titles – namely Killzone: Shadow Fall, Knack, Dead Rising 3 and Killer Instinct – aren’t exactly over the moon, leading many to criticize this generation for having a relatively weaker launch line-up. Ubisoft senior vice president of sales and marketing Tony Key, in conversation with Games Industry International, stated that this is normal for a new generation.
“Right now, all publishers are transitioning their development resources. For a game like Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag, most of the sales are still going to be on current generation platforms. We can’t make a version for PlayStation 4 or Xbox One that’s so wildly different that we can’t market them together.
“So, for now, developers and designers are focused on making a game that works really well on all of the systems – but as we transition resources to the next gen, it’s going to be more difficult to do that because the power of these machines is going to allow so much more creativity.
“Our feeling is the installed base of these machines will be much faster to take hold than previous generations. In the first couple of years, we expect double the installed base of previous generations. The reason why is: the last cycle was longer, so there’s a lot of pent up demand.”
Key has a fairly good point. Right now, it feels more like developers are still working to transition to the next generation and haven’t fully exploited the power of either console. Which makes sense since both are relatively new. That won’t stop either from having monster first month sales, but will we actually see double the number of console users from the Xbox 360 and PS3 era? Time will tell.