With the next generation slowly arriving, it’s pretty sure that the future holds a lot of surprises for all. And like everyone else, even the industry seems like it’s ready to hail the new era of gaming. On a similar note, Activision Blizzard's CEO Bobby Kotick is one such personality in the industry who feels that there’s a lot to expect in the future from the likes of Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
Kotick recently answered a host of questions related to the next generation of gaming during a recent earnings call and discussed whether the new consoles will actually offer new innovations to the traditional gaming experience, or just harness a lot of power and showoff lifelike graphics.
"My sense is consumers are going to be excited about this hardware and I think over the long-term that it will probably be as long as the current cycle. I think you're going to see new kinds of software that has not been available in this current generation. I'm seeing things we're working on and developing that we've never been able to do before and I think we'll excite audiences in ways that they haven't seen before," Kotick said, as reported by Gamesindustry International.
Kotick also seems quite impressed by the kind of work he has seen from both Microsoft and Sony, as far as improving the hardware side of the consoles is concerned. He feels that this will make it easier for third-party publishers like Activision to support both platforms.
"We have much more visibility today than we had even three months ago and both have made great progress. They've put more money against the launches than ever before and I think they've both learned a lot about how to improve the supply chain and manufacturing efficiencies," Kotick added.
The next Xbox is said to have a lot to do with the Kinect support it will get out-of-the-box. However, id Software technical director John Carmack feels that a lot more still needs to be done on that aspect for the console.
"I recognize that what my needs and desires as a game developer or what I use the technology for might not cover the broad consumer base that they're looking for, so it's their play to make," Carmack said during his latest QuakeCon 2013 keynote address, as scripted by Polygon. "I think Kinect still has some fundamental limitations with the latency and frame rate on it. Interacting with it is still ... when you interact with Kinect, some of the standard interactions — position and hold, waiting for different things — it's fundamentally a poor interaction.”
Both Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are set for a late 2013 release.
