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 Electronic Arts' chief executive officer John Riccitiello yesterday spoke at the Reuters Media Summit in New York where he made a few interesting observations and predictions about the current console wars.
These statements include game development for the Wii as compared to that on the Xbox 360 and the PS3, an impending price cut on all the consoles, and the PlayStation 3 hitting Sony's sales target .
He spoke about the difficulties in developing games for the Wii as
compared to other platforms in the market. Apparently, developing for
the platform is not as easy as some people would believe. The
difficulty isn't with the console itself but on the topics game developers
have to explore when creating games as well as the strength of Nintendo
in making first-party titles for their platform:
The Wii is a
challenge for all of us ... partly because of the strength of Nintendo
and partly because it's a more casual game experience that most game
companies aren't as comfortable building for as they are for the Xbox
360 or PlayStation 3.
Riccitiello also predicted that all the console makers would cut prices by next year and that the current generation of consoles would be breaking 200 million units by 2012 to 2013. If this holds true, then we will be seeing a rise in total sales of 18% as compared to the last generation.
Finally, EA's CEO mentioned that the PlayStation 3 would be hitting the company's fiscal-year sales target of 11 million units. He pointed out that this was made possible with the recent price cut on the console. He spoke about how this surge in the PS3 sales would affect the current console wars:
It looked like it might have been a two-horse race, but it's clearly a three-horse race. I think from this point, pleasantly for me, it's sort of fat city in the game industry.
It's always interesting to hear the thoughts of gaming industry leaders since they usually have more information to base their statements on. Riccitello's comments seem pretty consistent with other predictions but if one of the console manufacturers suddenly decides to drop prices a little early, then we might see a change in the current trend of the console wars.
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