Xbox One’s successor could be at least 2 years away, says Ubisoft CEO

Laurent Giret

A little more than a year after Sony launched its Playstation 4 Pro, Microsoft released its new Xbox One X earlier this week, continuing this somewhat unusual trend of mid-cycle upgrades. Both consoles are being marketed as 4K-ready, even though only the Xbox One X with its 6 teraflops of computing powers can truly deliver native 4K gaming.

Since the Playstation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X are still 8th gen consoles, everyone is now wondering if this console generation will last longer thanks to these mid-cycle releases. According to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot, that probably won’t be the case.

“As Sony launched PlayStation 4 Pro last year and Microsoft Xbox One X this year, we think we still have a minimum of two years in front of us before something new is coming,” Guillemot said in an investor’s call (via GameSpot). “But that’s our perception, we don’t have any confidential information on that front.”

It remains to be seen if a Playstation 5 and a new Xbox console could launch in 2019 at the earliest, but in the meantime the Ubisoft CEO says that these mid-cycle upgrades are a good thing for developers and the video games industry in general. “That is going in the right direction rather than trying to do accessories or other things,” he explained. “That is going to help the industry a lot because the games will be really beautiful on those machines.”

These days, Microsoft is marketing the Xbox One X as the best console to play games of the past, present and future, and this is a pretty good tagline. The new console seems pretty much future-proof, it you don’t take into account the fact that most Xbox One X enhanced games won’t run at 60 FPS. Maybe 9th gen consoles will finally deliver true 4K gaming at a consistent 60 FPS, and even more than that.

Do you really believe that 9th gen consoles could be just two years away, or do you expect the current console generation to last longer thanks to the Playstation 4 Pro and the Xbox One X? Let us know below.