With Tomb Raider’s recent E3 outing still making waves, Square Enix's worldwide tech director Julien Merceron actually reckons Sony and Microsoft have made the gravest of errors with the current generation’s extended life cycle.

I doubt I’m alone in respectfully disagreeing. Those of us less than financially endowed are doubtless still recovering from the half grand hit a few years back, purchasing consoles and a TV to best showcase their worth.
Merceron (Grade A name!) elaborated to GamesIndustry.biz

"We have Sony and Microsoft talking about this generation lasting 7,8,9 or even 10 years and it's the biggest mistake they've ever made,"

"This generation has been way too long, and I say this because you have a lot of developers that work on a new platform, and perhaps will not succeed, so they will wait for the next generation, and will jump on that platform. You could not do that with this generation though. So these developers went elsewhere to see if the grass was greener.

"They found web browsers, they found iOS, they found other things and a lot of them won't come back to the hardware platforms," he predicted. "So you could look at it that thanks to Microsoft and Sony and the length of this generation, it helped the emergence of other platforms and helped them get strong before the next hardware comes out."



Or alternatively you could look at it like this...

For the past five years, developers have enjoyed all the tools they’ll ever need to make genuinely challenging, inventive, world leading games. They just have to go make them.
New thinking, rather than technology, is needed to enhance the medium.

And for the record, Tomb Raider is expected for current generation consoles, Xbox 360 and PS3, sometime next year.