Wow, I'm shocked that Jenova would say that. I admire admire Chen, and I think he is one of the few developers I see that is trying to push video games, and the culture around gaming in a new and exciting direction, so it kills me to hear him say something that would categorize gamers into different blocks. Makes no sense. He should have known this would have set gaming sites on fire lol
<br /> I think its actually important for companies to invest in the next generation of consoles seeing how the development process has already began at Nintendo, and might be on its way at Microsoft and Sony. I don't know how much of an upgrade these new consoles will be, but typically the introduction of a new generation of consoles can cause disruption in the development process of games. For example current engines and tool kits that developers use now can become obsolete once the new consoles start rolling out, and EA needs to prepare their studios. Also new technology leads to innovation, and it's always good when developers start thinking of new ways to engage players. If you look at the Wii, Nintendo made a piece of hardware that was widely different from older consoles, and offered some unique game play, but for the longest of time and even now, studios have struggled to create good games for the Wii, because they were not sure how to make a game for the console. I am not saying there are no good games on the Wii. What I am pointing out is that if developers had a better understanding of the Wii before it was released there could have been a larger amount of quality games for the Wii. While the weak library offered by the Wii did not impact EA and other publishers/ studios, gamers certainly were.
<br /> <br /> It's better to understand new technology, and have the time to learn how to craft games that can fully utilize the new upgrades, rather than play catch up. It can be more harmful for a company to invest in a game for a new console and realize that they have to toss out a lot of their work, because it's not going to be compatible or that the quality will be poor. If you can read the article written by Wired magazine about Duke Nukem. It's an old article, but it shows what happens when a company tries to play catch up while technology increasingly improves. I admit that the article is more about what happens when a company becomes complacent, but there are quite a bit of cross over with being complacent and not investing in technology.
<br /> <br />Here is the link to the article: http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/1
<br /> <br />Out of curiosity, if you were in charge of EA, what would you invest in? I'm not being mean, I do want to know.
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