VG247

EA labels president Frank Gibeau has decided to tease the masses by stating he has already laid eyes on the next-generation of consoles from Microsoft and Sony.

During his opening keynote at gamescom 2012 attended by Gamespot, Gibeau spoke about free-to-play becoming the dominant pricing model “by the end of the decade,” and showed off Command & Conquer, running on DICE’s Frostbite 2 engine.

But you want to hear about next-gen not F2P games, right? Right. Continue on then.

According to Gibeau, he has “seen both” the new PlayStation and Xbox models and how the gaming systems will change the market.

“Ten years ago we used to measure our market in terms of 200 million people,” he said. “Now we are at a billion people playing games and we have a straight line view on 2 billion.”

Gibeau said EA plans to spend $80 million on next-gen this year alone, which further indicates EA has indeed seen the new machines, otherwise, they wouldn’t be pledging such a large amount of money on phantom hardware.

Microsoft has stayed rather mum on the subject, with the only confirmation that something is tucked under its sleeves being a a cease and desist order regarding leaked documents pertaining to “Xbox 720″ back in June.

Meanwhile, SCE UK boss Fergal Gara told MCV last month the firm would remain “committed to retail,” as it would be an important factor for the next PlayStation “whenever the next cycle,” of consoles landed on the market.

http://www.vg247.com/2012/08/16/ea-labels-president-has-seen-both-ps4-and-next-xbox/

"seen" could merely mean seeing a prototype shell of the final product.

I sincerely doubt there are a billion people playing a sort of video game. That number just seems too high.

wow, i'll bet MSony won't like to see this one.

Well, everyone knows the consoles will be coming, and he didn't actually say anything specific about either of them (except for the statement I quoted below), so I think it was perfectly within reason.

But I find this odd: "Gibeau said EA plans to spend $80 million on next-gen this year alone, which further indicates EA has indeed seen the new machines, otherwise, they wouldn’t be pledging such a large amount of money on phantom hardware."

Does this number include Wii U, or did EA specifically exclude Wii U from their "next-gen" number? I wonder how much of this $80 million is being spent on Wii U development as well. Assuming the number includes the Wii U, the rest of that quoted part doesn't really seem all that revelating - not that it matters.

we know but the when is pure speculation.  having EA say they've seen it helps date them which is exactly what i'm sure they are trying to avoid right now.  announcing too early is a good way to kill sales of current gen hardware.