EA's Hilleman: Biz Shift Means No New Consoles For A While

The explosion of casual platforms and digital distribution has ushered in new design paradigms, and core console makers have exhausted themselves launching the current generation -- so a new console generation isn't coming anytime soon, says Electronic Arts chief creative officer Rich Hilleman. "I expected we’ll see a PlayStation 3.5 before we see a PlayStation 4 and an Xbox 560 before we see an Xbox 720,” said Hilleman at Stanford's Hot Chips conference, according to Venturebeat. "The biggest shift is how fast packaged goods games are changing and going away," he said. The barrier to entry for digitally-distributed portable games on iPhone, Nintendo DSi and PSP is getting lower and lower, and spells a two-to-one dominance for such platforms over traditional consoles. That means lower development costs and smaller team sizes, Hilleman said, calling it the "democratization of game development." While it creates a more competitive environment for traditional developers, it also creates an entry point for talent that will serve games in the end. Another factor affecting the timing and nature of future console generations is on-demand and streaming services, concepts beginning to crop up with cloud-based set-top box services like OnLive. Hilleman is looking forward to these technologies, and says he knows of seven startups globally working on "remote desktop for gaming" services.