Livingstone: "I don't think triple-A games will ever go away"

The way is led by triple-A games says Eidos president Ian Livingstone, as they continue to claim the lion’s share of production values and even R&D investment. They won’t go.

He doesn’t believe there’ll be dedicated hardware after the next generation of consoles, as it’ll ”probably all be embedded in TV.” Peter Molyneux agrees saying it’s ”not going anywhere.”

Publishers are continuing to tie the future of franchises to metacritic bands, meaning we’ll likely see less and less. Molyneux pointed to E3’s declining line-up as proof.

”I don’t think triple-A games will ever go away because they are still leading the way in terms of production values, investment and R&D,” said British industry veteran, Ian Livingstone of Eidos.

“It’s just how the next consoles are going to survive, will there be any hardware after the next-generation? Probably not, it’ll probably all be embedded in TV.”

The Eidos boss doesn’t agree with the prediction that triple-A titles will eventually go extinct and neither does former Lionhead Studios head Peter Molyneux who now runs 22Cans.

”It is not going anywhere,” he said.

”There’s interesting research here comparing sales success with Metacritic scores. Publishers are becoming more and more obsessed with Metacritic bands. I think that’s going to squeeze the number of titles that come out. I think at E3 there were about 500 titles and last year we had 1000. I wouldn’t be surprised if that shrunk to sub 100 titles.”

Crysis developer Crytek has vowed their future projects will all be free-to-play whilst keeping their production values high. Publisher THQ has decreed they will enter the free-to-play market and only fund triple-A grade titles that don’t require a lot of capital, like Obsidian’s South Park.