

[shal]Ubisoft[/shal] CEO Yves Guillemot spoke with CNBC on the future of gaming, and touched upon two topics: gaming services, and production budgets, the latter of which Guillemot expects to rise significantly.



“The next generation is going to be so powerful that playing a game is going to be the equivalent of playing a CGI movie today.”

Guillemot expects next-gen video game budgets to average $50~60 million, which is a little over double what the average retail [shal]PS3[/shal] and [shal]Xbox 360[/shal] game costs to make. The forthcoming [shal]OnLive[/shal] service, which applies the concept of cloud computing to games, was also discussed.

Ubisoft currently supports the service, and Guillemot believes that the success of OnLive may push console manufacturers to release the next round of hardware earlier than expected. OnLive had a big showing at GDC, but barely made an appearance at E3. The service faces a lot of potential issues, including network bandwidth, hardware fees on the provider’s end, and ability to handle the number of users.

Consoles still have a major advantage over cloud computing because they don’t fully rely on a user’s internet connection speed/quality, but with small upfront costs OnLive still has the potential to become a major contendor.

[Source]