Gerhard Florin, executive vice president at Electronic Arts, says he would like to see the emergence of a single unified gaming platform, because multiple incompatible consoles has made life much more difficult for both developers and consumers.
“We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible,” Florin said in an interview with the BBC. “We’re platform agnostic and we definitely don’t want to have one platform which is a walled garden.”
“I am not sure how long we will have dedicated consoles – but we could be talking up to 15 years,” he said, suggesting the days of independent consoles are numbered as server-based games streamed to PCs or set-top boxes would continue to grow in importance. “You don’t need an Xbox 360, PS3 or Wii – the consumer won’t even realize what platform it is being played on.”
According to the BBC report, EA currently develops and publishes games for over 14 separate gaming systems, including consoles, PCs and portables.
