14 DAY TRIAL // Randy Pitchford, the president of developer Gearbox, which has just put out Borderlands, is saying that companies like id Software and Crytek are actually hurting themselves and videogaming by creating experiences designed for the next generation of console hardware rather than for the current one.
Pitchford has told the Official Xbox Magazine that “Some people have invested a lot going to a place that's too far, and the customers aren't ready for that yet because they don't have the hardware for it. And so they can't find the market. I was thinking of Crytek, they couldn't find a market because they made a game that very few people could play. I'm not putting words in their mouth, I remember reading something publicly where they said they couldn't put this on consoles because of the hardware.”
The Gearbox boss is also worried about what id Software is doing with its upcoming Rage, which is set to take up the full capacity of a Blu-ray disk and could arrive on the Xbox 360 packed on three separate disks. To Pitchford, this is taking things to far in favor of benefiting from the technology rather than offering an experience that can easily be enjoyed by a bigger number of gamers.
Both Microsoft and Sony are insisting that they currently have no plans to create and launch an Xbox 720 or a PlayStation 4, saying that there is still much power left in the current generation not used by game developers and that can be employed to deliver experiences superior to those offered by flagship titles like Modern Warfare 2 or Uncharted 2. Analysts are also saying that only Nintendo is working on a new console, probably with High Definition graphics, which might arrive in late 2010.