EA Labels President Frank Gibeau recently admitted that he had seen the next gen follow ups to the PS3 and Xbox 360 first hand, and now he has hinted at when they’ll come out.
Gibeau told Bloomberg TV:
We’re into the sixth or seventh year now of this generation of hardware and so it’s a mature market. In terms of [software sales] fatigue, I consider it more of a mature market, a stable market.
[Sales] flatten out a bit towards the end [of a console cycle]. Typically a transition year before new hardware comes out you see that flattening effect inside of the business.
The new hardware is going to be coming out in about a year’s time, so we’re right around this period in time when the market’s going to slow down and then you have a new game changer coming with all new technology, all new hardware, and another growth period.
He was then asked whether they’d be called the PS4 and Xbox 720, to which he replied:
I don’t know what they’re calling them, I’m under non-disclosure so I can’t comment too much about what they’re specifically doing.
Whenever the consoles do release, EA remains upbeat and plans to make the most of the next gen. The publisher revealed last May that it will invest $80 million in next gen games by next March. Gibeau continued:
‘Transition is our friend’ is kind of the saying we have around EA because it gives you a chance to reset everything. And we’ve done enough transitions in this business that we know what we’re doing, and we’re going to go after this one in a big way. But it is a time where you see new companies emerge as leaders and some traditional companies fall away.
Could you see yourself buying a next gen console next year? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to read our thoughts on last week’s Daily Reaction.
