Long PS3/360 lifecycle "biggest mistake ever", has expedited decline

The end of the traditional console cycle has expedited the decline of the overall console market.

That’s the claim of Square Enix’s worldwide technology director Julien Merceron, who has branded the long shelf life of both the PS3 and Xbox 360 and the biggest mistake [Sony and Microsoft] have ever made”.

We have Sony and Microsoft talking about this generation lasting seven, eight, nine or even ten years and it’s the biggest mistake they’ve ever made,” he told Games Industry.

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.”