Square Enix: Current generation too long

The PS3 and Xbox 360 lifecycles have gone on for too long.

This is the view of Square Enix technology director Julien Merceron, who believes developers are now moving on to work on other platforms such as mobile gaming.

Merceron told GamesIndustry: “We have Sony and Microsoft talking about this generation lasting 7, 8, 9 or even ten years and it’s the biggest mistake they’ve ever made.

“This generation has been way too long, and I say this because you have a lot of developers that work on a new platform, and perhaps will not succeed, so they will wait for the next generation, and will jump on that platform. You could not do that with this generation though.

“So these developers went elsewhere to see if the grass was greener. They found web browsers, they found iOS, they found other things and a lot of them won’t come back to the hardware platforms. So you could look at it that thanks to Microsoft and Sony and the length of this generation, it helped the emergence of other platforms and helped them get strong before the next hardware comes out.”

It is likely the next-generation consoles will arrive next year. The Xbox 360 has been around since 2005 with the PS3 released a year later.