THQ: We don't need new hardware, Kinect and Move are enough

[Reasonable]

Mr Khan said:

Reasonable said:

He's right from a developer perspective, but unless Move and Kinect reverse the trends around SW purchasing  noted by The Source, and unless Nintendo find a way to stop the Wii's declining sales, then there is going to be pressure to get new consoles out.

But... clearly development costs on PS3/360 are still steep for many developers, and while it's declining the Wii has nonetheless sold bucketloads with far less horepower than the HD twins, showing that the average consumer (if I may use that phrase) simply isn't hugely graphics/spec driven.

So... I suspect new consoles to arrive sooner than perhaps THQ would prefer, but I expect them to be less of a jump than say PS2 to PS3 and I expect a lot of focus on strong SDK development tools to really aid in lowering the cost of development for high end games.

I also expect them to build and expand on Move/Kinect/Wiimote and I expect to see existing consoles remain on the market similar to the PS2 to PS3.

This has been the position i've held, that for Sony and Microsoft, the next hardware jump is going to be more about optimization than raw power. I mean, we still haven't really seen 1080p consistent 60fps, and now we're not likely to if they instead start chasing the dragon that is 3D at a higher resolution with a decent framerate.

Sony and Microsoft move up to a more stable, optimized level, and Nintendo takes a big jump, but into the same ballpark technically. Everyone's seen the devastation that having an odd-man-out technically has dealt to the third party environment, and there's going to be strong inline pressure

Nobody gets past 2013 at the absolute latest. My updated prediction is N6 in Spring 2012, Nextbox/PS4 holiday 2012 with PS4 maybe slipping into Q1 2013

Yup.  In some ways the tools to develop are going to become more important that the HW itself for developers going forward, and they'll be key to enabling developers to produce titles that represent big jumps over Uncharted 2 and God of War Three (or a Gears or Halo Reach) while keeping costs at a level where they have a reasonable expectation of profit.