EA Exec Down On Consoles

Or, perhaps more pertinently, up on PCs. EA's Gerhard Florin told the BBC that multiple console formats were not a sustainable option.

"We want an open, standard platform which is much easier than having five which are not compatible," said EA's head of international publishing. He said the web and set-top boxes would grow in importance to the industry.

"We're platform agnostic and we definitely don't want to have one platform which is a walled garden," said Mr Florin. EA currently produces games for more than 14 different gaming systems, including consoles, portable devices and PCs. "I am not sure how long we will have dedicated consoles - but we could be talking up to 15 years," Mr Florin added.

He predicted that server-based games streamed to PCs or set-top boxes, would become increasingly important.

The BBC article concludes that gaming will end up with a set-top box that is "basically a boiled-down PC."