Activision will influence console design

Activision boss Robert Kotick reckons the company is now enough of a big deal to start influencing the design of the next generation of consoles.

"Now that we have the weight of being the largest payer of royalties to the first-parties of any third-party company, I definitely see us as starting to influence hardware design, and they're thinking about the evolution of the next generation of hardware," said Kotick at the Activision Blizzard Analyst Day in Los Angeles, as reported by GamesIndustry.biz.

"The good news is that when it does come it's going to have a powerful impact on our ability to capture a lot of that part of the marketplace today that feature films, television or music [inhabit]."

However, Kotick believes there is a long way to go until we see new machines, and expects PlayStation 3 to be around for at least eight years.

"The better news for us right now is it's going to happen a lot longer from now than we've seen with prior generations, because the power and the capability of the hardware we have today is so strong, and the differentiation between the devices is so great that you're likely to see this cycle last a lot longer than we've seen in the past," he predicted.

"I think there's a long life ahead of us, we're in year eight of PlayStation 2 and when you look at PlayStation 3 technically we're likely to see at least eight years' success."

Before then, Kotick thinks we will see consoles drop even further in price. And, when they do, he said the mainstream audience will be happy to jump in.

"We're about to enter the next phase of the console opportunity - that is where price points are starting to achieve mass market-level price points," he said.

"We haven't gotten to a price point yet that we think is a catalyst for true mass market consumption, but we're starting to see over the next couple of years price points come down to price points that we think will be the catalyst for continued mass market adoption."