14 DAY TRIAL // Yves Guillemot, the chief executive officer of publisher Ubisoft, believes that the Xbox One, the PlayStation 4 and the Wii U do not represent the final generation of home consoles and that many changes will be precipitated by the cloud.
The executive tells CVG that, "I still think it is not the last generation, because the manufacturers want a way to control their platform and the machine is the best way to have a specific access to that."
Guillemot believes that the quality of the next-gen devices will allow Microsoft and Sony to attract solid third-party experiences which, in turn, will increase the overall audience for video games and will make the medium more respectable.
The CEO adds, "I think that the cloud is going to change a few things. Now with cloud and the increase of bandwidth we should have the possibility to increase the quality of games a lot over the next few years. But I think five years is the right timing for it."
As long as hardware makers and publishers have money to spend to attract talent, Guillemot believes that the gaming industry can grow quickly over the coming years, reversing the current decline.
The Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 will be launched in November of this year and Ubisoft has a number of titles in development for the new platforms, covering genres from action adventure to racing.
The company has not offered information on exactly how titles like Watch Dogs or The Division will use the power of the cloud or whether they are planning any features that will be specific to one of the platforms.
Ubisoft has traditionally been platform agnostic, which means that it is delivering the same content in all versions of its games and does not include any platform specific DLC.