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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."
Somehow I was hoping for a bit more...
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).
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
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.
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.
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?