It’s been over seven years since the Xbox 360 debuted and over six years since the PS3 launched. Since then, the video game industry has experienced a global recession and the emergence of mobile gaming as a genuine platform. It’s time for console gaming to refresh itself with new energy once more and hopefully bring the industry back to where it was before things went wrong.
Personally, I’ve been hoping for both Microsoft and Sony to do this for more than a year now as portions of the industry seem to be falling into a stagnant state. It looks like 2013 will be the year we move forward. Both companies have now released tantalizing hints that they’ll finally show their hand in the next several months.
First up was Microsoft who waited until the second day of this new year to show off a countdown clock to E3. E3 is the industry’s largest exhibition by hype and exposure. Normally Microsoft hasn’t done anything like this before where the clock counts down to nothing specific. It is widely believed that Microsoft will use the June show to announce and show off the successor to the Xbox 360, which some have codenamed “Durango“.
Not far behind is Sony, who just this week made a post on the official Playstation blog. The post features the date for a Sony announcement on February 20. It’s almost guaranteed that Sony will use that time to debut the successor to the PS3, codenamed “Orbis“.
I’m extremely excited to see what these announcements will hold, both as someone who works in the industry and just as a regular gamer. Perhaps this is just what the industry needs to going forward.