Sony’s much-lauded PlayStation 4 console has been launched around the
world a mere three months ago, but the company already has their sights
set on the next iteration of the gaming console. PlayStation Software Product Development Head for Sony Worldwide
Studios America Scott Rohde said that it’s in Sony’s culture to start
work on new projects relatively soon after their
initial launch.
initial launch.
“We
tend to start thinking about the development of the next system,
surprisingly only a few years into the life cycle of the current gen.
…and of course very soon, we’ll start thinking about what we’ll do next.
That’s the culture at Sony. We always have to do something that’s
bigger and better than what’s already been done,” he said.
But
Rhode was quick to explain that, although they will be entering a
planning phase, it will be a slow process for a number of years. “As
soon as you launch a new console you have to take a breather, there’s
going to be a couple of years where we’re just enhancing this machine
and making it as great as it can be.”
Sony’s Lead System Architect
on the PlayStation 4 Mark Cerny previously said that the company
started work on the PlayStation 4 in 2008, and detailed the process. “We
had six years to make the hardware, and it only takes about four years
to do the actual engineering, so we had two years to figure out what we
wanted to make the PlayStation 4. And we looked at a huge variety of
technologies, including some that were just coming into possibility,” he
told Digital Trends.
He also chuckled at the fact that he
couldn’t tell development team that he was working on the
next-generation console. “I had gone around in 2008, 2009 and toured 30
something development teams, talking to them about what sort of features
they’d like to see. But I couldn’t admit to being actively working on
PlayStation 4, so we disguised it as a “questionnaire” as to what they
though the future of video game consoles would be like. We didn’t fool
anybody.”