News E3: Carmack sees long future for next-gen consoles

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/2012/06/07/e3-carmack-sees-long-future-for-next-gen-co/1

 

Audiophiles cannot be compaired to gamers hanging on to an ageing console, sorry John but thats the biggest bs statement I've ever read. An audiophile would actually be someone like many of the folk here at BT that tailor a bespoke device that they've spent many hours and lots of money on.

Consoles = extreme experience? I think not.

 

@B1BUD - agreed... Console are for the masses who just want to play COD or FIFA without having to ensure their system meets minimum specs or diagnose hardware compatibility issues. I believe cloud gaming will consume that market.

 

You can tell when someone is severely out of there depth in terms of their technical expertise. Consoles represent simplicity, an easy ride, too easy unfortunately because console hardware becomes dated within a short time of space and of course let's not forget the very limited and basic control systems. Kinect might have been ok except for the floor space required and latency issues, I sure as hell don't want to sit holding a numpty controller with thumpads or sticks to control movement.

John should stick to what he does best... building rocket motors and control systems for his rocket projects.

 

Consoles are an excellent thing. They provide a stable hardware environment that can be pushed much, much further than PC hardware because all its limitations, quirks and abilities are known inside out. Consoles, once they sort out their shitty controllers, are the future.

 

You cannot compare consoles and PCs spec for spec. Consoles may come out with what you would consider last gen hardware in the PC world, but that fact that the hardware does not change gives the game maker the ability to squeeze the most out of that hardware as they can, something they can never do on a PC. Build a PC with similar specs to the 360 and you wouldn't be able to run any kind of current game on it (the 512mb of RAM alone would limit you to 10yr old games). So please stop making this comparison.

Also if you prefer a mouse and keyboard, there are lots of FPS games on the PS3 that support them. A feature I wish MS would allow for on the 360 (you can but a $100 device to allow it, but that's too much for me).

 

Yeah, but the 360 is now 6.5 years old, so it's more like last, last, last, last, last gen

A console merely sporting "last" gen hardware would be most impressive I'm sure!

 

To be honest I stopped listening to anything Carmack said about a decade ago. He and his games company, who were once kings are stuck in the past.

 

Less waffle Carmack, more games. And I mean 'good' games. Not the Rage kind, the Quake kind.

 

Carmack? Good games? Pah. He's gone past his prime I'm afraid, Fizzban.

 

I know Doesn't stop me hoping though.

 

Rubbish. Carmack has only ever been really involved in the technology behind the games, never the games themselves. What he does is create cutting edge gaming tech, and he's still doing that far beyond any other single person today.

I won't deny that id software hasn't made a truly good game since Quake 3, but don't confuse the company as a whole and Carmack.

 

Ha consoles are like the audiophile niche. They would be the "bought 1km RMS all in one at Argos"-phile if anything.

 

Let's not blame carmack. It's the carmack team. Carmack would create amazing games like Doom if he could, but his team are forcing his hand and creating boring games that take 6 years to develop.

I don't want a console and I don't care how much game developers squeeze every last drop of performance out of it. Xbox 360 games looked pretty ugly to me even when the console was new. Every time I walked into a shop and saw one, I would remark how large the pixels were and how it would have been nice if they had given it AA.

 

I think I've interpreted this quite differently to everyone else.

For a start, he's not talking about the current consoles but the ones yet to be released. I think it's almost beyond question that whatever specification they end up, they will be exponentially more powerful than the current lot. And, seeing as the current gen have been with us 6&7 years respectively, (and still going) it's probably not too hard to predict the next gen will have a long shelf-life either.

Also, he's not comparing consoles to PC's, but rather consoles vs what will become the new mainstream - the gaming medium which will replace consoles as the mainstream - cloud computing.

In the coming years more and more 'standard' people will be playing their games directly via their TV's or tablets - without buying any specialist gaming hardware at all, (except maybe a controller & a very low-cost interface) all the heavy computing will be done remotely. I think it's in that context he's saying that consoles will become niche 'audiophile' type products - with it only being the more hardcore gamers still willing to shell out hundreds of pounds for the more powerful (than cloud computing) consoles.

In that sense consoles would be niche - PC's would simply be Über niche in comparison.

That's how I understood it anyway...

 

Carmack has had a hard-on for consoles ever since the xbox.

 

Half of what he says is just to get a rise out of people.

Actually though, he's right,
The next gen consoles will have a long life, not because of how good they will be, but because it will probably be some of, if not the last dedicated gaming consoles. They will become a niche and relegated to the back shelf just like pc's have.

It's not hard to see that mainstream gaming has shifted towards mobile games, $600 (game and console) buys a heck of a lot in Itunes and the Play store.

 

That's exactly what he's saying. Sadly most people here just got hung up on console bashing and didn't really understand what he was talking about.

Sent from Bittech Android app

 

Yes, exactly how I read it.

 

Good points of discussion here, the console as we see it today has to evolve - I think extreme gaming experiences such as the graphical content on the PC we see today, to run this from the cloud would require some serious hardware and network connections 10x faster (maybe more) than the 100mbps we have today.... for each and every user that connects.

Regardless though, the added benefit for developers of chargeable DLC (on the PC we would just call them patches and they are free mostly) on consoles makes them the single most important revenue stream for many now.

Long live the PC, the only thing keeping console and cloud based money grabbing so and so's from milking the 'haves' of every penny and denying the 'have nots' from being able to afford it.