EA labels president Frank Gibeau has decided to tease the masses by stating he has already laid eyes on the next-generation of consoles from Microsoft and Sony.

During his opening keynote at gamescom 2012 attended by Gamespot, Gibeau spoke about free-to-play becoming the dominant pricing model “by the end of the decade,” and showed off Command & Conquer, running on DICE’s Frostbite 2 engine.

But you want to hear about next-gen not F2P games, right? Right. Continue on then.

According to Gibeau, he has “seen both” the new PlayStation and Xbox models and how the gaming systems will change the market.

“Ten years ago we used to measure our market in terms of 200 million people,” he said. “Now we are at a billion people playing games and we have a straight line view on 2 billion.”

Gibeau said EA plans to spend $80 million on next-gen this year alone, which further indicates EA has indeed seen the new machines, otherwise, they wouldn’t be pledging such a large amount of money on phantom hardware.

Microsoft has stayed rather mum on the subject, with the only confirmation that something is tucked under its sleeves being a a cease and desist order regarding leaked documents pertaining to “Xbox 720″ back in June.

Meanwhile, SCE UK boss Fergal Gara told MCV last month the firm would remain “committed to retail,” as it would be an important factor for the next PlayStation “whenever the next cycle,” of consoles landed on the market.

Posted: Aug 16, 2012 9:44 am

Source: http://www.vg247.com/2012/08/16/ea-labels-president-has-seen-both-ps4-and-next-xbox/