Speaking at a GDC luncheon with several game industry luminaries, Blizzard's game design EVP Rob Pardo said that Sony and Microsoft need to "come up with new forms of gameplay and new mechanics."
Suggesting that the two companies should look to Nintendo and work on improving their input devices, he said, "If [Sony and Microsoft] don’t come up with a way to come up with new forms of gameplay and new mechanics, than there is no point in giving us new hardware, because then it’s just about cloud computing."
“This is going to make or break [console companies] this time around,” Acclaim's David Perry added. “I’m not aware they’re really putting a big amount of effort into finding out what the people who are making the games [want].”
Junction Point's Warren Spector speculated, “I think they’re so focused on the all-in-one device...I’m not sure they’re actually thinking about the games that are actually going to come out. It seems kind of crazy.”
Spector then turned to Pardo and joked, “I’d love to see what you guys do with the Wii,” to which the Blizzard exec smiled and raised his eyebrows, but stayed silent.
