Ubisoft Expecting New Consoles By 2012

GamesIndustry is running a brief story about comments from Ubisoft's CEO indicating that the company is gearing up for a new generation of consoles within two to three years. "The French publisher is increasing headcount to work on future technology, with mergers also on the cards to increase development and technology resources. 'We want to take advantage of a company that could bring more technology to us, or new brands,' said CEO Yves Guillemot. 'So we have now enough to help us to grow the company for not only next year but to get ready for the coming of the next generation consoles that are probably going to happen 2011, 2012.'" Guillemot also provided some details about the release plans for some of their upcoming games.

Comments

Fits in with the cycles, big whoop

[hattig]

Seems to make sense seeing as consoles are usually on a 5 year cycle, which means we could see the next XBox released in late 2010, but maybe Microsoft will want to get an extra year out of it instead of launching early with dodgy hardware again. The PS4 in late 2011 also seems likely. The Wii is an unknown. Surely the next version will have HD capability, but only at a certain price point and Nintendo will want to make a profit from launch. So "Wii Too" will be less powerful than its competitors, but more powerful than the PS3 or 360. 32nm process is probably going to be used, with a rapid shrink in 2013 to 22nm.

Re:Fits in with the cycles, big whoop

[aliquis]

So "Wii Too" will be less powerful than its competitors, but more powerful than the PS3 or 360.

Where do that come from? Nintendo consoles haven't always been technically inferior.

Wasn't snes faster than megadrive? I don't remember.
Gamecube is more competent than PS2, and PS2 still sold at higher prices and way more consoles.

So just because something is affordable don't mean it has to be crap.

Re:Fits in with the cycles, big whoop

[Anonymous Coward]

The SNES had a weaker CPU than the Megadrive, but an inspired graphics chip.

The Gamecube benefited from an extra year or two of advancement in technology and integration.

Nowadays all the graphics chips are amazing, you want better you pay more. No more hacks with your raster controller to display a 2D tiled map at angles to create MODE 7 eh?

Re:Fits in with the cycles, big whoop

[hattig]

You do realise that the PS1 and the PS2 also had 10 year lifespans, but it isn't 2018 yet?

Sony will release the PS4 in 2011 or 2012, it could use a PowerXCell32 derivative (2/4 enhanced PPU, 32 enhanced SPU, >1.5 TFLOPS) at around 5GHz, along with some GTX300/400 level graphics (2-3 TFLOPS), and remain backwards compatible, and take advantage of all the effort Sony have put into the PS3 firmware, Home, media, etc, straight away. i.e., this system will generate a beast of a console for very little development money. The SPUs will be used for immense physics calculations, leaving the graphics free to run 1080p/120 for 3D glasses games. I bet Microsoft's hardware will be of a similar power.

1080p limitation

[Zero J]

With the next gen of consoles presumably still limited to 1080p resolutions (unlike PC games), will there really be much of an incentive to upgrade again so soon? Sure, they can throw a lot more polygons on the screen, but it won't be anything like the difference between the last gen and current gen consoles.

Recession + Disruption = Longer cycle

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I've watched the history of the console wars keenly, and agree that the five year cycle has been the norm throughout, I find it probable that this generation will last longer than usual. Within the market, you have the Wii and the DS, which have proven beyond all doubt that processing power and graphics are far from decisive in determining market success. That's to say nothing of the predicament third parties find themselves in with the march of progress and rising costs, where HD game development simultaneously brings record revenues and record losses, and a single bomb has the potential to outright destroy a company (as Hellgate did for Flagship, Haze did for Free Radical, and Lair did for Factor 5). Outside of the market, you have a recession that has just really begun and could well be felt at 2012 and beyond, reducing entertainment spending. Add them together, and it's easy to see how consoles will have to be a lot more than "bigger and better" if they want to justify their existence to the market and developers alike five years after their predecessors.

I hope not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I like the current generation and would like to see it extended to about 2013.

My logic for this is that the graphics of your average $500 computer will play most new release games at a medium quality. This is because there's been a glass ceiling placed over the videogame industury by the hardware limitations of consoles. Keeping the ceiling low means that I can hold out longer before I need to upgrade my machine to play the games I want. Yes, porting games from the 360 (and all the really good ones get ported eventually) is a good thing for the PC crowd too. If every game ran like Crysis the pool of PC gamers would be a whole lot smaller.

This also means faster hardware and better graphics when I actually do drop the money on some new parts. Take your time console makers. You'll do us all a favor.

Re:Reasonable

[Aladrin]

Sony is betting on it, actually. They've repeated said that the PS2 will last 10 years (1 more year to go, and it's all but dead in the US apparently) and the PS3 will also last 10 years.

But since Microsoft is more on a 5 or 6 year cycle o far, MS's next console is going to beat the crap out of the PS3. Look at what a single year did with 360 vs PS3. The PS3 is -still- working to gain ground on the 360, despite it being a 'better' console.

I think Sony would be much better off giving the PS3 a minor upgrade in a few years and calling it a PS4, and then having a real change for the PS5. Kind of like Nintendo just did with the DS/DSi.