Lately, a lot of talk has surfaced and bad blood has been boiling over surrounding Sony and Nintendo, two companies that Square Enix makes games for. However, now they have decided to take a stab at Sony and Microsoft by mentioning that they are ruining the gaming industry by allowing their consoles to have 7+ year long life spans.

Square’s worldwide technology director Julien Merceron had a lot to say about the subject, talking with gamesindustry.biz in detail.

“We have Sony and Microsoft talking about this generation lasting 7,8,9 or even 10 years and it’s the biggest mistake they’ve ever made.” He also mentioned that, ”This generation has been way too long, and I say this because you have a lot of developers that work on a new platform, and perhaps will not succeed, so they will wait for the next generation, and will jump on that platform. You could not do that with this generation though. So these developers went elsewhere to see if the grass was greener.”

“They found web browsers, they found iOS, they found other things and a lot of them won’t come back to the hardware platforms.” “So you could look at it that thanks to Microsoft and Sony and the length of this generation, it helped the emergence of other platforms and helped them get strong before the next hardware comes out.”

Merceron pointed out that Sony and Microsoft are letting the competition strengthen their systems before the gaming giants are able to release their respective consoles. However, what exactly does he mean? Sure, PC games are out there, but they are not consoles, and are not really competing for the same market. There is at least one Android based gaming system on the horizon, and while it seems cool, I wouldn’t think it would make that large of a dent in Microsoft or Sony’s bottom line.

Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, why does Square Enix care? Sure, they make games for the Xbox 360 and PS3, but those titles still sell well (in large part) regardless of the age of the hardware they are developed for. Are they just bored? And even if so, they will most likely be making games for the Vita, 3DS, and Wii U, so I don’t see the point in making these statements. To me it’s a case of “don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

What do you guys think? Is the life span of consoles too long these days? Is Square Enix right to call them out on it?