Riccitiello: EA does not expect next-gen hardware any time soon

During yesterday's conference call discussing the fourth quarter results for Electronic Arts to its investors, CEO John Riccitiello revealed that the publisher believes the current hardware cycle will be an extended one, and that there is no need for new hardware in the immediate term.

"Although we are in uncertain times, we continue to believe we will have an extended hardware cycle and we continue to see robust growth with our various direct service businesses," Riccitiello said in the call's closing remarks.

During a question and answer session immediately after the talk, Lazard Capital analyst Colin Sebastian asked for clarification, commenting "I know at least one of your competitors had already talked about making some R&D investments upfront ahead of the next generation," referring to recent comments by Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot.

"I presume you're talking about some comments from one of our French competitors very recently," said Riccitiello. "I think there's always going to be new aspects - new handhelds, and new peripherals, and new things that are coming out - that involve investment from companies like ours. And there is I think an increased rate of change provided for by first parties. I would look at, frankly, the iPhone as a new platform in the handheld industry."

According to Riccitiello, while EA thinks there is continued justification for investing in new platforms, the company does not see a traditional next-generation hardware shift any time soon.

"If you're looking for good solid reasons for investing in R&D against new platforms, the market is providing us that," he said. "However, I would point out that what traditionally is viewed as a new platform is when the industry, in a consolidated or collective way, steps forward with a more powerful CPU and GPU combination, more processing power, traditionally married to different choices on medium," specifying cartridges and varying disc formats.

"And those big changes are not something that we're seeing the need for in the immediate term, nor do we expect it in the immediate term."

"Frankly, we can do high-definition gaming today that you can show off on the best available monitor that you can spend thousands of dollars for, and that's already provided for," he continued. "I think that arms race...well, I can never say that it's done, [but] the relevance of doing that faster and faster, as it had been traditionally done through the late 80s and the 90s, seems to have subsided."

"And so we're projecting, relative to the core tech we develop for, for that to be a very extended cycle."

Last month, Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot revealed that his company was investing research and development into the next generation of hardware.

"What we see is that on handheld and on consoles there are lots of things that will happen in the next few years," Guillemot said at the time. "That's why we consider that it's important to recruit now, and train people, so that those investments will come in the next few years. I'd say that some of the needs will come in one to two years, to start working on products."

No traditional next-gen platforms have yet been announced, and given Riccitiello's statements today - and considering EA's close relationship with Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony - expectations are low for any major next-generation hardware announcements at E3 in June.