14 DAY TRIAL // Ubisoft doesn't plan to make any PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games after 2015, the company's Chief Executive Officer Yves Guillemot has revealed.
The last generation of consoles is on its dying breath as far as developer support from Ubisoft is concerned, the executive has revealed during an interview with GameInformer.
"What we see is that this year is still fine for the PS3 and 360. But next year because they are selling very quickly, we'll move to the new hardware. After 2015, it will be hard for us to create games for those systems," Guillemot explains.
The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 have huge install bases, with each console having sold over 80 million units worldwide since their debut in 2006. The PlayStation 2 held on for years after the new players entered the market, but it looks like the paradigm has shifted.
This generation of consoles is expected to last for even less time, as the development cycle is expected to drop to around five years for the next wave. The Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are already moving units very fast, with Sony reporting that the PS4 is the fastest-selling console yet.
Sony has revealed internal data showing that over 10 million hardware units were sold at the end of July, while the latest official data from Microsoft, dating from April 2014, listed 5 million units being sold.
Guillemot's reveal is probably a pretty solid indication of the overall trend in the industry. Ubisoft has been known to have a pretty good nose as far as hardware platforms are concerned, always on board with new and successful developments, but also cutting losses short by jumping ship once things start going south.
That is the case of Nintendo's Wii U platform, which Guillemot says is dead in the water when it comes to multi-platform AAA games.
In any case, Xbox One and PS4 seem to be pretty healthy, with both of them getting more game sales in spite of their smaller install bases already on some titles, which is especially in the case of the PlayStation 4.
The PS3 and Xbox 360 are holding back a ton of features in games, and many adopters of the latest generation would be happy for the cord to the older one to be cut in order for developers to truly take advantage of the vastly increased power of the latest hardware, as evidenced by the next-gen only games already out.