The console war is heating up with both Sony and Microsoft having announced price cuts for their consoles, and new technology in development. Now Electronic Arts’ Chief Creative Officer, Rich Hilleman says that Sony and Microsoft had pushed themselves very hard to launch their consoles, and that they don’t want to build the next generation of consoles anytime soon.
In an interview with VentureBeat, Hilleman says, “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. The biggest shift is how fast packaged goods games are changing and going away.”
Hilleman notes that portable consoles including the PSP, Nintendo DS and iPhone outnumber home consoles two-to-one. The iPhone is apparently in the forefront of this “democratization of game development” and causes greater competition for EA as well as reduces development costs.