In a recent interview with Game Informer, EA chief executive Patrick Soderlund talked up Microsoft's mid-cycle upgrade push, saying that the publishing giant is "100 percent" behind the move.
"If you're a developer, when you make games, you always want more capacity. You always want to bring more to the players."
- EA Studios EVP Patrick Soderlund, speaking to Game Informer.
In a recent interview with Game Informer, EA Studios EVP Patrick Soderlund talked up Microsoft's mid-cycle upgrade push, saying that the publishing giant is "100 percent" behind the move.
Referring to the changing face of the console landscape, and in particular the emergence of Project Scorpio -- an high-end Xbox One revealed by Microsoft during E3 -- he suggested a scalable console market is a smart one.
As Sony prepares to follow suit with its very own hardware upgrade, codenamed Neo, and with console VR almost here, the EA exec welcomes the extra firepower and possibilities those upmarket systems will bring.
"If you're a developer, when you make games, you always want more capacity. You always want to bring more to the players. We're truly excited about this," said Soderlund.
As for those consumers worried about the idea of Scorpio and Neo exclusives, Soderlund says it's important console-makers keep the ecosystem intact, because from a development standpoint, creating a game for different console iterations is "actually really straightforward."
"We have an engine in Frostbite that is dynamic and scaleable. It's an engine that today supports substantially all known PC platforms and DirectX 9, 10, 11, 12," he added. "Given that these machines are almost PC architecture inside of them, they are not that difficult for us to develop for."
Of course, he concedes there will be some challenges, such as deciding how to best utilize that extra power.
Rising development costs could be another knock-on effect, with larger, more expansive games requiring greater levels of investment. Even if that does end up being the case, Soderlund is hoping the lavish consoles will pay devs back by serving up larger install bases.
"The notion of an Xbox ecosystem or a PlayStation ecosystem that keeps growing and gets bigger and bigger is important for us," he says.
"Even if we come to a point where we're seeing increased development costs as a result of that, hopefully the added install base is going to solve that."
You can find the full interview over on Game Informer.
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