14 DAY TRIAL // Neither Microsoft nor Sony has offered any official details about their next-generation home consoles, but French video game publisher Ubisoft believes that it will be able to use their features to introduce more social features in its titles.
Yves Guillemot, the chief executive officer of Ubisoft, has stated, “Ubisoft is positioning itself to capitalize on the forthcoming arrival of the next generation of consoles which will be increasingly connected and will strongly boost the market thanks to a new qualitative leap and the integration of social games benefits and the item based model.”
He added, “These major opportunities will enable us to extend our global reach, increase our average revenue per user (ARPU) and therefore raise the profitability potential of each of our brands.”
Ubisoft believes that the social and free-to-play business model will also be on the rise on the PC, on smartphones and on tablets.
Titles like The Settlers Online and Howrse, which are using the social model, have been big earners for the publisher and have boosted the revenue of its online and digital division by 110 percent, to 80 million Euro (102.3 million dollars).
Launching social titles on home consoles will probably mean that the next devices from both Microsoft and Sony will be more open and will allow developers to update their titles quicker, without going through the long certification process that is required for the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360.
Rumors about the next generation of home consoles have suggested better motion tracking integration, systems that will block used games from playing and more focus on media capabilities.
An announcement will probably be made before the end of 2012.
At the moment Nintendo has unveiled its next platform, the Wii U, and has plans to launch it on all major markets before the end of the year.