PlayStation 4 Pro er ude nu, og om under et år vil Scorpio udkomme. Disse to konsoller repræsenterer en ændring i spilbranchen, og det har bekymret mange, om hvorvidt udgivelsen af flere konsoller per cyklus vil forvirre spiludviklere og bremse forskning i fremtidig teknologi.
Chris Evenden, som EA's vicepræsident for Investor Relations, har dog for nylig udtalt ved Barclays Global Technology, Media and Telecommunications Conference, at dette skift ikke vil have en negativ effekt på firmaets forskning og udvikling.
"You can increase the performance of consoles by asking AMD for a better CPU and asking them for a slightly better GPU, but the programming for games doesn't change very much, as the performance profile of the hardware hasn't changed, it just got faster all around.
And the operating system, what they're doing now with the new PS4 Pro and the Xbox Scorpio, is really the same software platform, the same operating system, so the R&D costs shouldn't change. Now, the quality of the assets you apply will slowly increase over time, but that's the way it's been forever.
The way a development cycle works, is that you develop for the highest performance platform, which is generally a high-end PC, and then the tools you use will scale that down for the other platforms that you're supporting. That's not a challenge either, so it shouldn't really have a big impact in R&D, because it's not really changing what we're doing. "
Vi krydser fingre for at dette gælder for alle, inklusiv de mindre udviklere, hvoraf flere mener at det vil blive svært at udvikle spil til både PS4, Xbox One, PS4 Pro og Scorpio uden at budgettet stiger.