Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot thinks the next generation of consoles will be the last traditional hardware generation.
The console hardware landscape is changing. The idea of a big drastic “console generation” every 5-7 years just isn’t cutting it these days with the advancements in technology, and players like Microsoft are looking at solutions such as upgradable hardware. Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot thinks that the future of consoles will take an even more drastic route: one where we don’t even really have hardware and it’s all streamed directly to our TVs (a-la OnLive).
“We believe in streaming–it demands lots of bandwidth,” he said. “We think it’s going to grow but today, with the types of games we have, it will still take a bit of time to be more popular.”
Guillemot believes “traditional” consoles have one more generation left in them before streaming takes over, stating that “my expectation is we will have another cycle of consoles before we go to streaming. I don’t have dates or anything but what I see is the manufacturers would prefer to have again a new hardware to take up the potential of new possibilities that they can bring.”
Interesting, especially considering the tragic fate of the aforementioned OnLive streaming service. Perhaps it was just a bit ahead of its time? Guillemot certainly seems to think so.
Source: GameSpot
