14 DAY TRIAL // The president and Chief Executive Officer of THQ has said that he does not believe that a new home console generation is needed by the video game industry, with Kinect and Move adding enough innovation to sustain the current consoles while also expanding the number of people who are interested in gaming.
Talking to IGN Brian Farrell said “another $1000 box that the hardware guys have to subsidize” is not needed on the market and that video game developers would be affected by the need to spend more money on games development than until now.
Farrell added, “To have an extended cycle with a broader audience I think, strategically, is exactly the right way to go, and Move and Kinect are both designed to do that. The market will decide if one or both of those will work, but I love the concept of both hardware guys trying to broaden the audience beyond just the core.”
The CEO of THQ believes that power of the current consoles, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3, is enough to deliver complex and good looking experiences to gamers with those who build and publish video game now in charge of creating better stories, more interesting characters and impressive production values.
The PlayStation Move from Sony for the PS3 has been launched in the middle of September and the company is reporting solid sales of over 1 million both in North America and in Europe.
The Kinect peripheral from Microsoft for the Xbox 360 is coming in November and some analysts are predicting that the device, which uses no physical controller attached to the player, will manage to sell more than 4 million units before the end of the year.
The problem for both devices is that initially most titles for them are linked with fitness, virtual pets and dancing and might lead to the peripherals being shunned by more traditional gamers.