Traditionally, console lifespans have been relatively long as optimisations are made over many years to provide enjoyable gaming experiences even when the technology becomes outdated. Furthermore, many people invest in a console knowing they will be able to play a vast selection of games and not have to upgrade their system for a considerable amount of time. Clearly, this isn’t the situation in today’s market due to the advent of VR and the current crop of consoles exhibiting poor performance. In an age where 4K televisions are relatively affordable, it seems disappointing that the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 struggle to achieve 60 frames-per-second at 1080P. Of course, there are exceptions including Uncharted 4. Whatever the case, it’s likely that console generations will become shorter and upgrades may even happen in a similar vein to PC gaming.
Recently, GameStop CEO Paul Raines Fox Business discussed Uncharted 4 and its impact on the company’s sales figures.
“It’s attached some hardware and we’ve also sold a fair amount of digital content that goes with Uncharted, so we’re pretty pleased with that title.”
He also divulged information regarding their yearly performance and predicted that the new consoles will be discussed throughout E3:
“It’s coming off of a year, we had a record net income year last year and our GameStop-branded stores had record profitability as did our technology-brand stores, so we’re very happy with that title and where the business is at.”
“We’d love to see some virtual reality and some new consoles come in. We’re going to hear about that at E3,”
“But I’d say for investors, GameStop’s very healthy and a very resilient company.”
This is exciting news and I’m really looking forward to seeing the hardware announcements during the conference. Perhaps, it will just be a teaser image or more concrete details about both companies strategies towards the upgrade cycle.
