QuakeCon 2013: Carmack On Next-Gen Console Hardware

jones_supa writes "QuakeCon 2013 is running full tilt. John Carmack kicked off his speech by addressing the 'elephant in the room,' discussing the arrival of a new console generation to a crowd of attendees at the largely PC-focused event. He's optimistic about the coming console cycle, commenting that it's 'obviously going to be a good thing for gamers, developers, and an excellent thing for AMD.' John said he hasn't run quite enough tests on the hardware for the two consoles, but said they're both 'very close, and very good.' In his traditional long talk (watch on YouTube), Carmack also commented on Microsoft's always-on Kinect, its recently reversed DRM policies for the upcoming Xbox One, the death of optical media, and the state of handheld gaming."

So...

[Type44Q]

Well, I RTFA. So both consoles are virtually the same and Kinect kinda sucks.

Somehow I was hoping for a bit more...

Re:Little difference anymore between PC/console

[TWiTfan]

No, but a common architecture will make it a helluva lot easier on developers, which should result in more and better games (which DO matter).

Re:Little difference anymore between PC/console

[Anonymous Coward]

It's essentially been like this ever since the original x-box. The distinction is meaningful because the games are still designed with interface control schemes that target one category or the other. Until consoles are shipped with a mouse/keyboard (never), it will remain as a meaningful distinction.

Re:Little difference anymore between PC/console

[Anonymous Coward]

A common architecture means that consoles will continue to hold back the progress of cross platform PC games. My current gaming rig is already an order of magnitude more powerful than either the XBone or PS4.

relevant?

[argStyopa]

John Carmack was a brilliant hardware/software dude in the 1990s and 2000s.
I'm having trouble being certain of his relevance today.

His company produced one of the greatest, genre-introducing games ever ...but what has he done lately?

Cdr Keen - absolutely brilliant
Wolfenstein 3d - 1992 - breakthrough game
Doom 1993? - novel, a big evolutionary step forward.
Quake 1996 - another huge advance in rendering, net coding
Doom 2/Quake 2 were not substantial steps forward. D2 was meh; Q2 I believe did have a rather revolutionarily-open design welcoming modding.
Doom3 - essentially D(1), but on 10 year newer hardware. Gameplay was indistinquishable from D1.
Rage - a flop, from the use of gigantic outdoor textures (whose render-farm requirements pretty much excluded their massive modding fanbase) to a console-focused development, and gameplay that was utterly a repeat of previous iD titles (and other games in the market like Fallout, etc)

More triangles in the scene (and curves, and textures, and lens flare, and 15 different flavors of "pitch black") is more a direct credit to Nvidia/AMD than to Mr Carmack, and I don't see that anything since Quake 2 (arguably, Quake 1) is really a monumental advance forward.

1996-2013...17 years is a helluva dry spell, and the fact he still gets attention speaks more to the reverence the community STILL holds for what he created than anything he seems to be creating.

Don't get me wrong, I still respect the guy, who doesn't? But he's massively rich and doesn't seem to be hungry anymore. He seemed to go off down a "handheld gaming" gopher-hole for a number of years...I guess I just wish he could pull another rabbit out of the hat and make me give a shit about an iD product again.

Re:Little difference anymore between PC/console

[Anonymous Coward]

Better textures is only part of it and would be exactly the type of sloppy porting job I'm talking about. What about higher poly models, more objects on screen, better lighting, more advanced shaders, more accurate physics, smarter AI, larger environments, deeper gameplay and controls optimized for keyboard/mouse?