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Carmack: Mobile Gaming To Surpass Current Consoles
donniebaseball23 writes "The rate at which hardware iterates in the smartphone and tablet space has allowed the technology to nearly catch up with consoles. It won't be long before we're all carrying small devices more powerful than the PS3, says Doom creator and id Software programming genius John Carmack. Speaking in an interview, he commented, 'It's unquestionable that within a very short time, we're going to have portable cell phones that are more powerful than the current-gen consoles.'"
Even if that's the case, Nintendo still wants no part of it.
http://plasmaoxyd.de/wp/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/reissack.jpg
This. Current consoles are outdated as heck. It's the end of this gens "next gen," and the next gen will be ushered in very soon. The hardware is there.
... who needs game consoles now that everybody has Farmville?
</small_dose_of_sarcasm>
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
the problem is that server hardware pricing has it's prices lowered by the commodity consumer x86 market. if that evaporates, that new core i12 will cost $10000. I dread this day when cpu time/ram/storage are all 'services' one has to rent like utilities, with a complete lack of privacy and control.
So, he is predicting in 5 years a phone will have the performance of a (by then) 10 year old console. When, big surprise, my current phone is about equal to a console from 10 years ago.
Did John just finally discover Moore's Law?
No, it's not, and what you're saying makes no more sense than asking, "Who needs <your OS of choice> when we all have a text editor?" You're comparing a simplistic product that runs on a platform to a platform, rather than comparing a platform to a platform. A more apt joke would have been, "Who needs game consoles now that Facebook has games?"
Really, all they're saying here is that the hardware platforms that iterate more frequently will eventually outpace the ones that hold still for the better part of a decade, which is no surprise, given advances in miniaturization and power efficiency. And that effect does matter, because contrary to your analogy, not all mobile games are simplistic and mindless click-fests. A small but increasing number of them are decent titles put out by capable teams who can produce games with solid gameplay that stand up well against their console counterparts.
Take Infinity Blade for example. It's a game with simple mechanics that doesn't succumb to being simplistic. It runs on the Unreal 3 engine, looks stunningly beautiful, and works perfectly well on both the current and last-gen iOS devices. If they're putting out stuff like that now, I can't even begin to imagine what sorts of games will be coming out in three years or five years. By then, we'll hopefully be on Generation 8 consoles, but I wouldn't bet against the mobile devices of that day being more powerful than the consoles we have now.
For certain genres of games the iPad and it's ilk are great. For others, namely those that require precise movement in real time, they suck, they suck hard. Why? No tactile feedback. I tried playing Pac-Man on an iPhone and gave up in about 3 minutes because even if your thumb slips off the button a little bit you won't notice until Pac-Man refuses to move and is then gang-raped by a pack of ghosts.
Now of course, if a company can actually find a way to give haptic feedback on a touch screen, they will literally be able to mint money. But I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.
Monstar L
The problem is everyone and their dog and their dog's fleas have bought into the Jobsean school of mobile design which means slim = sexy and iSliver batteries for everyone.
No matter how much you shrink things there are certain fundamental rules one simply can't avoid, and one of those is "you push a bunch of textures and physics and advanced 3D models around in real time you ARE gonna suck power"
Now while I'll give old Steve credit, in that he has trained his users pretty damned well to expect to carry a charger with them I really can't see the iExtension cord becoming the big item on everyone's Xmas list, can you? Sure you might eventually squeeze the vector processing and FP math engines down to that size, hell you can probably stick a chip on my pinkie nail that is faster than my 1998 gamer rig. But in the end it don't change the fact that at the end of the day these are supposed to be MOBILE devices, and not in the Alienware "Where's the outlet again?" definition of the word. I can't see folks putting up with 15 minute battery life just so they can have Halo III on their cell phone.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
PC's are fastly more powerful today then any console out there AND they iterate like crazy! Hasn't helped the number of games for that platform has it?
As for looking stunning, take a GOOD hard look at the game you mentioned, visit the home page, scroll down to four screenshots on a row click on the screenshot on the right of a single guy standing in front of a grey wall. Look at the textures of the wall. My god, that is BLURRED! If that same game had appeared on a PC or even a console it would have been slammed for such obsolete rendering. But because you are thinking "oh wow, look at what my phone can do" you forgive rendering artefacts that were solved on better tech years ago.
Yes, phone hardware will continue to get faster but so will other tech. The most powerfull phones can now barely keep up with the older netbooks, except for the memory and HD IO speed and screensize and inputs... but my gaming PC is a bit more powerful then a netbook. I know because my linux desktop is an AMD APU machine and even for desktop tasks, the difference is often very clear. Not enough for me to put up with the energy slurping of a gaming rig for posting on slashdot but still, to many things at once are noticable.
Betting that future hardware will be more powerful then hardware we got now is basically what you are claiming... well, lets see, the PSP and its successor have been presented as being more powerful then their main console brethren, see how well that worked out. Not only wasn't the PSP more powerful then a PS2 its sales were far lower then a device that made no such claim of power.
The biggest gaming market out there is casual games and no, not even FarmVille. Real casual games, that are 100% free to play. Like solitaire either on your PC or phone or in a browser. So? Is Carmack going to do a solitaire game? Future predictions on the industry are near useless. And saying that in the future hardware will be more powerful barely counts even as a prediction as all.
Breaking news: Tomorrow the sun will come UP!
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.