Ubisoft: Current-gen holding next-gen back

Creating the same game for current and next-generation consoles is holding those titles back.

That's according to senior vice president of sales and marketing at Ubisoft, Tony Key, who believes that studios are finding it hard to get creative with the new consoles.

He claims that developers can't make a next-gen game significantly different from its current-gen counterpart because then they wouldn't be able to market them together.

"Right now, all publishers are transitioning their development resources," Key told GamesIndustry.

"For a game like Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, most of the sales are still going to be on current generation platforms. We can't make a version for PlayStation 4 or Xbox One that's so wildly different that we can't market them together.

"So, for now, developers and designers are focused on making a game that works really well on all of the systems - but as we transition resources to the next-gen, it's going to be much more difficult to do that because the power of these machines is going to allow so much more creativity."