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Farrell: Traditional Hardware Cycle is Dead

Tom Ivan's picture

By Tom Ivan

August 5, 2008

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“The way we think about it at THQ is we plan our business around each of those platforms, not around ‘the cycle’”

Brian Farrell, THQ president and CEO, says the industry’s traditional hardware cycle no longer exists.

“We used to always think of this industry as ‘the cycle,’” Farrell said at the Pacific Crest 10th Anniversary Technology Leadership Forum, reports MTV Multiplayer.

“I think the reality now is there are several sub-cycles,” he added, referring to the handheld market, Nintendo’s Wii, and the ongoing battle between Microsoft’s Xbox 360 and Sony’s PlayStation 3.

“It’s hard now to talk about ‘the cycle’ — I think we have to talk about all of the cycles,” Farrell said. “The way we think about it at THQ is we plan our business around each of those platforms, not around ‘the cycle.’”

Farrell’s comments echo those he made on this site last month when he said: “With so many great platforms, each with distinct capabilities reaching different audiences, we believe it is more important than ever before to segment the market when determining our publishing strategy.”

However, at the time he also said, “We are essentially in the second year of what feels like at least a six-to-eight year hardware cycle.”

rabbitc's picture
On August 5th rabbitc said:

...and what happens if that cycle disappears altogether? If there's one thing the Xbox, X360 and PS3's 'Phyre' engine have taught us, it's this: provide decent, standardized development tools to studios and they'll happily port to anything with enough grunt.

Much of the emerging business segments seem to be highlighting the strength of less 'bleeding-edge' applications such as mobile devices (DS, PSP, mobile phone (celluar) and older consoles (PS2) - this shows that the market is breaking away from focusing on new technology as the sole focus of revenue. Instead, I believe we may see a de-streaming of platforms where existing manufacturers focus on cross-compatible equipment and licensing standards rather than selling hardware.