Levine: I don’t want new hardware

Famed developer Ken Levine has confessed that he has no appetite for a fresh generation of home console hardware.

"At this point I have no desire as a developer and zero desire as a gamer to see the next generation come out from where I’m sitting right now," he said on the Irrational Games podcast, as reported by Eurogamer.

"It still costs us a fortune to make games on this platform. If they’re going to up the scale, up the art, up the content, I don’t know how to make that and sell it to anybody for under $100 a game. Who wants to do that? It’s bad for everybody."

The comments certainly compliment those made by Microsoft back in July 2009.

"When Natal comes out it will feel like a new generation has arrived,” Microsoft Game Studios boss Phil Spencer told MCV at the time. I see it as like the launch of the Xbox 360 back in 2005."

Then in January last year Microsoft’s now departed Entertainment and Devices boss Robbie Bach claimed that the Xbox 360 hasn’t even reached middle age yet.

However, other observers have questioned that idea that the arrival of Kinect and Move will offset the potential disruption caused to the games industry’s established commercial body by the lack of new console hardware any time in the near future.

Last August Ubisoft’s European MD Alain Corre said he "didn’t think" that the new hardware duo can extend the life cycles of PS3 and Xbox 360 beyond a further two years.

And in May Games Investor Consulting director Nick Gibson claimed that: "I believe that we will see a major new generation of hardware launched in the next two-to-four years and that proprietary consoles will still be on sale in ten, even 15 year’s time."