EA: next-gen consoles are 'spectacular'

In his keynote address at Gamescom, EA president of labels Frank Gibeau confirmed the existence of new consoles from Sony and Microsoft.

We've seen the road map, which Microsoft scurried to scrub from the web and disavow. There was also a slip of the tongue that Microsoft was adamant did not refer to a new Xbox.

Sony's been a little more open, admitting it was working on developing games for the PlayStation 4, but that hasn't stopped rumours flying there, either.

At Gamescom, though, the cat was let firmly out of the bag, courtesy of Gibeau, who gave a keynote on the changing landscape of the video game industry.

"I have seen the successor to the PS3 from Sony and the Xbox 360 from Microsoft, and they will be spectacular," he said, according to German-language newspaper Finanzen (Google Translate).

While we can't imagine any circumstances under which Gibeau would admit that the consoles were rubbish, we're pretty intrigued by what could be behind the "spectacular" claim.

We're also going to be keeping a keen eye on the price tag — if Ouyahas demonstrated anything, it's that gamers are clamouring for a lower price point on consoles, even though it may mean a compromise on hardware.

Gibeau added, according to GameSpot, that "10 years ago, we used to measure our market in terms of 200 million people. Now, we are at a billion people playing games, and we have a straight line view on 2 billion."