Doom Architect "Not Excited" by Next-Gen Consoles

[Timothy Chang]

Doom Architect "Not Excited" by Next-Gen Consoles

id Software boss says the future is not about graphical detail.

John Carmack, the technical visionary whose gaming engines brought us Doom, Quake, and RAGE, is not interested in the potential power of next-gen consoles. Instead, he thinks that technology has reached a point where it doesn't hold back game designers anymore, and that the next graphical leap is not an important issue, since the only meaningful output is higher visual fidelity.

"Any creative vision that a designer could come up with, we can do a pretty good job representing on current generation and certainly on PC," he said. "In many ways I am not all that excited about the next generation. It will let us do everything we want to do now, with the knobs turned up."

Carmack believes that the current direction of console makers is misguided, and the focus needs to shift elsewhere, as the hardware race between Sony and Microsoft won't make much difference. He also provides Nintendo as an example of why graphical processing power is no longer key - the Wii possessed a mere tenth of the processing power of the other two systems, yet enjoyed incredibly healthy sales figures due to its innovative control scheme.

So what should we be getting excited about in the not-too-distant future? According to Carmack, his money is on Virtual Reality gaming, with a potential tie-in to the mobile market. He predicts that "in a couple years, we hope that instead of being tethered to a PC, you build it off mobile-phone hardware, an iPhone 5 or whatever. No wires, you use the cameras for optical positioning and then you can walk around. You can set up your arena and play in Virtual Reality." Sony has expressed interest in the concept, although it will likely be some time before consumers will see anything less than giant head mounted displays.

If it is as easy as Carmack says, it will be interesting to see how id Software's upcoming titles fare on next-gen platforms.


Source: GamesIndustry [http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2012-06-19-john-carmack-not-all-that-excited-by-next-gen-hardware]

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[Fumbles]

Well isn't that funny... I was "Not Excited" by your piece of shit game (RAGE)... Isn't that funny Carmack? As a PC gamer, why don't you make games instead of glorified tech demos?

 

[Skeleon]

Hm. I never saw Carmack's opinion on game design as too terribly relevant, he always seemed more proficient in the engine department. Hell, Doom 3 was a good, not great, game that was design-wise actually pretty backwards with a few exceptions.
That said, I find myself agreeing with his general point: Too many game makers focus on the "power" behind a game rather than the design. And while I never played Wii, Nintendo is and often has been a good example of good or addictive design over engine power. My ancient Gameboys and newer DS can attest to that.
Hell, look at games like System Shock 2 whose engine and graphics were very backwards even at the time of release but whose game design was excellent[footnote]And personally I thought the "mechanical" parts didn't look half bad in that engine, only everything "biological" looked utterly horrendous and not in a good, scary way.[/footnote] or Psychonauts with pretty basic, low-res, cartoony graphics but very interesting twists and humour.
Simply put, it's not the graphics or the engine that really make a game great. Without wanting to sound like some snob, I've found the oldie and indie game market to serve that appetite much better than most of today's triple A titles. It would be good to see major projects turn back towards that as well.

 

[matrix3509]

Games stopped being limited by visual fidelity in the late nineties. That being said, Carmack is entirely right. The next gen console will not matter in the least. He's knows more about the industry than anyone else in said industry. Anyone that pretends to know more about hardware than him are liars.

 

[matrix3509]

Pretty much every single thing you said there was wrong and misinformed.

OT This is pretty hypocritical coming from Carmack seeing as he complained about the PS3 hardware for ages and about how hard it was to hit 60 FPS on the machine.

The reason Carmack complained about the PS3 (just like all developers do) is because the hardware is shit to code for. Seriously I suggest you learn about hardware architecture and how the PS3 is a shit example of it before you criticize a man who knows more about said hardware than anyone else in the industry.

 

[matrix3509]

Pretty much every single thing you said there was wrong and misinformed.

OT This is pretty hypocritical coming from Carmack seeing as he complained about the PS3 hardware for ages and about how hard it was to hit 60 FPS on the machine.

The reason Carmack complained about the PS3 (just like all developers do) is because the hardware is shit to code for. Seriously I suggest you learn about hardware architecture and how the PS3 is a shit example of it before you criticize a man who knows more about said hardware than anyone else in the industry.

It's also due to things like the split RAM in the system and the fact that the OS is more bloated than on the xbox. The fact remains that the hardware held it back while on the xbox this wasn't the case.

New hardware is not expensive to make, they could easily bring out new consoles that do not have the current limits that we have.

As far as I know, Carmack isn't against bring out new consoles, he's against bring out consoles solely to capitalize on higher resolutions, which is pretty much all Microsoft and Sony care about, along with making the root keys more closed than ever (but let's be honest here, all three consoles are going to be cracked within months of release anyway).

 

[Mortuorum]

Well, I am disappoint by Carmack :/
He knows well enough about current console limitations (especially when it comes to RAM, inherent leveldesign stemming from that and graphics) and one would think he went through hell enough trying to optimize RAGE to run on them for 2 years... apparently not.

+1 Internets to you, sir. Unlike Mr. Carmack, I am personally looking forward to owning a console where I need not endure a lengthy loading screen every minute-and-a-half because of memory limitations.

 

[matrix3509]

I don't care about resolutions on consoles. I just want new consoles so advances in things like physics and things like the number of objects that can be rendered at 1 time can be made. There is only so much you can do with 512MB of RAM.

I wouldn't count on them being cracked so soon. Next to no progress has been made on the 3DS and the PS3 was only cracked through a really stupid mistake Sony made (the newest FW hasn't been cracked). I'm not sure if next gen will be so easy.

Thats exactly what Carmack is talking about though. None of those extra physics objects make a lick of difference to gameplay. I don't know if you've noticed just how stale gameplay is these days. Its all I can do to just stay awake when I play a AAA game. Also throwing more processing power at a physics engine isn't going to solve shitty physics.

 

[Tanis]

This guy hasn't been relevant in YEARS.

Regardless...
I think the next gen of consoles, if made right, should be able to last a solid 10 to 15 years if MS/Sony don't do 'the retard' and make damn sure the core console has enough ram/proper hardware specs/internal HDD that's a minimum of 500GB.

 

[Baresark]

I agree with Carmack on this occasion. The only potential leaps to be made are graphical ones. Any vision a developer has can be attained by the current hardware (at least on the PC). That developers think that things like graphics are holding back their vision is just poor thought out. If the next generation of consoles only match what the PC is doing now, no significant things have happened.