Reeves wants single format future

While the internet is buzzing with mutterings about Wii 2 and Xbox 720, David Reeves is hoping the future of the console market will be much simpler.

In an interview with MCV, the European COO for Capcom said he’d rather have a single games platform to work with – although he was happy to chip in with his guesses as to when we’ll see the next consoles.

My best guess is that, given the rate of the Wii’s decline, Nintendo would have to do something and so they might be the first mover,” he said.

Microsoft and Sony I think will hold off as long as they can. They’ll try and make sure that Kinect and Move in one form or another will be part of the next offering, because they have to amotise the cost of developing and advertising those kind of peripherals.

But I don’t know what they will look like. I guess my hope is that in ten or 15 years there will just be a single, standard gaming platform. Maybe that’s anti-capitalistic of me.”

Reeves said that one of the key disadvantages of the multi-format model is the long-term costs of releasing new hardware.

It’s true to say that there is nothing like a hardware launch to invigorate the market for retailers and publishers, but there’s also nothing like a hardware launch to lose two billion dollars in two years,” he explained.

I guess hardware manufacturers want to delay it for as long as possible and retailers want to see it as soon as possible. But what will actually determine it will be the competition between Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo and anyone else who might come in.”

Read the full interview with Reeves here.