Current consoles might last another 10 years

“One of the things I like about this generation is we are still very early and there’s still a lot of room for growth as we move down those price curves. Those engines have a lot of steam left in them. We think it could be seven or eight years before new machines start to roll out,” said Brian Farrell, chief executive of THQ in an interview withForbes.

The president of Epic Games, Mike Capps, also estimates that next-generation systems, which will succeed PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Wii, will not hit shelves until somewhere between 2012 and 2018.

Perhaps, next-generation game consoles are not exactly around the corner, partly because both Microsoft and Sony invested massive amounts of money into Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and game developers yet have to take advantage of existing hardware. Nonetheless, it is almost clear that technology conglomerates are considering future steps based on perception of existing devices by the consumers as well as advantages and disadvantages their consoles have currently.

According to a news-story by Forbes, Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are, in fact, talking to companies like ATI, graphics product group or Advanced Micro Devices, Intel Corp. and Nvidia over the next-generation graphics processing units to power their future game consoles.

“We are always preparing for the next hardware. We are under development. But the hardware is a kind of box that consumers reluctantly buy in order to play our games. […] Every hardware needs some revolutionary features. This time around, it happened to be we had a revolutionary user interface. Will it be the same for the next generation? I really can’t tell,” said Satoru Iwata, president of Nintendo.