The logic here has me scratching my head. The introduction of other platforms for delivery of games does not necessarily end the established cycle of the more traditional console. A console game requires a certain level of content and quality in accordance with the capabilities of the console. Creating that content and quality requires a minimum amount of time and effort that, as best as I can see, is still on the order of 2-5 years development time, which is the traditional range of console game development time. This does not change unless you want to obtain a much poorer game by forcing the development cycle to be shorter or miss marketing windows of opportunity by making the game longer(or, in the case of Duke Nukem Forever, taking forever and then buggering the whole thing up anyway because of trying to hit a moving target of keeping up with the state-of-the-art).
The article does not clearly indicate, unless I missed it, whether Mr. Riccitiello thinks the cycle has to become shorter or longer, but I take the implication to be that he thinks the cycles have to be shorter simply because other platforms exist. My guess is that he is thinking to be able to have the same game developed for the entire multiplicity of platforms; that's the only rationale I can see that makes sense in this context, unless there is something more I am missing. If this is the case, I would offer that that is a disastrous strategy. Each platform has different strengths and weakness and particularities that make it suitable for only certain games and not others. Creating a unified design that operates across all platforms is possible, but the result will likely be a sub-optimal utilization of every target platform with shallow, over-simplified gameplay, necessitated by the interface differences of each platform.
Honestly, it would be nice to get a more complete account of the rationale for this statement of changing console cycles, exactly which cycle(game development on the console or the development of the actual console itself) is changing and whether he believes it is getting longer or shorter, and why. As is, the article really is just incomplete and only serves as a launch point for WAG(wild-ass guessing, for those not familiar with the term) and baseless flame-wars.
ADDENDUM: or maybe the article is incomplete because John Riccitiello is really just tossing warm, stinky brown stuff, hoping something sticks(seems a lot of CEOs, analysts, and pundits in technology, computers, and gaming do this more nowadays).
