Glen Schofield, CEO of Sledgehammer Games, developers of Modern Warfare 3, recently did an interview with GameTrailers.com about a new Spec Ops game mode. Okay, no big whoop there. Gameolosophy, however, zeroed in on his comments about current generation consoles, saying, “Some things are just too big for the consoles we have right now, we always want to throw in 1 more tank or 10 different enemies but we have a long way to go…”
Now, normally I wouldn't pay too much attention to this. But the reason I find this particularly interesting is that twice in the past week now we've featured quotes from big names at Sony and Microsoft, both essentially saying that their respective next-gen systems are in development but that they have no plans to announce their release for a good long while. And the reason they both give? That the current hardware is still in a good place and has a lot of room left for developers to go.
As shown by quotes like this one from Chris Lewis, vice president of Interactive Entertainment Business for Microsoft Europe:
"I would only say it’s too long if things are stagnating. If developers are finding they’re bumping their heads against the glass ceiling of development scope, if we weren’t bringing revolutionary technology like Kinect, if we weren’t able to, frankly, completely update the UI of Xbox Live without predicating that on people buying new hardware, were those things not true I might be more in agreement with your assessment.
I actually don’t think it’s too long if the experience continues to grow, if people continue to flock to it and they feel like they’re getting great value. That is everything we’re experiencing right now. That’s how I’d answer that."
Or this one from Sony Computer Entertainment president of worldwide studios Shuhei Yoshida:
"Looking at the platform cycle, when the platform becomes something game developers are not able to improve their creations with, that's the time we have to really seriously consider shifting to the next generation."
So how much can we really trust Microsoft and Sony on this subject, when developers for very high profile games like Modern Warfare 3 are saying otherwise?
